What I have been up to...

It's been a busy couple of months, working on two book chapters and one journal article. This impending spring will be focussed upon completing my comprehensive exams and perhaps I will leave book-like reviews or something here as I work through my reading lists.

Below are the abstracts of the pieces I have been working on:

Accepted: ABSTRACT #1 (Submission for the International Journal of Social Robotics)


Looking Forward to Sociable Robots
This work examines humanoid social robots in Japan and the North America with a view to comparing and contrasting the projects cross culturally. In North America, I look at the work of Cynthia Breazeal at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her sociable robot project: Kismet. In Japan, at the Osaka University, I consider the project of Hiroshi Ishiguro: Repliée-Q2. I first distinguish between utilitarian and affective social robots. Then, drawing on published works of Breazeal and Ishiguro I examine the proposed vision of each project. Next, I examine specific characteristics (embodied and social intelligence, morphology and aesthetics, and moral equivalence) of Kismet and Repliée with a view to comparing the underlying concepts associated with each. These features are in turn connected to the societal preconditions of robots generally. Specifically, the role that history of robots, theology/spirituality, and popular culture plays in the reception and attitude toward robots is considered.

Accepted: ABSTRACT #2 (Submission for "Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous." Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2009)

Abject Cyborg Woman
The female-monster is frightening for different reasons than her male-monster counterpart. Barbara Creed argues that woman is typically defined in terms of her sexuality, signaling the centrality of gender to the understanding of female monstrosity. This work considers the hypersexual, dangerous, and disruptive female cyborg figure, a film icon that has endured in the cultural imaginary for decades. Creed uses the term ‘monstrous feminine’ to describe an array of frightening female representations that range from the vampire and the witch, to the monstrous primordial mother, and notes, “[critical] neglect of the monstrous feminine in her role as castrator has led to a serious misunderstanding of the nature of the monstrous woman in the horror film and other popular genres such as film noir and science fiction.” This essay addresses this neglect, and considers the female cyborg in relation to feminine monstrosity and abjection. Following Creed, this work draws upon Julia Kristeva’s theory of the abject as well as Sigmund Freud’s concept of the castrating woman. This paper shows that Creed’s list of monstrous women should be expanded to include yet another monstrous female, the cyborg, both abject and monstrous.

ABSTRACT #3 (Looking for new publishing options)

Pathological Machines: Gender Representation and the Female Cyborg
Sean Redmond distinguishes between a humanist and a pathological cyborg. Redmond argues that the humanist cyborg works in collaboration with human beings and longs to understand the emotional complexity of humanity, yet never seems to quite achieve unity of “the corporeal to the technological.” Star Trek’s Data may be thought of as the exemplary humanist cyborg. Conversely, the pathological cyborg is relentless in its “will to power…The pathological cyborg wants nothing more than the complete genocide of the human race.” Pathological seems to best describe the dominant representation of the female cyborg on film and in television, most often characterized as hypersexual, dangerous, and disruptive. This work briefly traces the representational history of the female-machine (e.g. mythological creature, mechanical artifact, literary figure, filmic image), broadly outlining an enduring cultural presence that stretches from antiquity to our contemporary moment. Then, drawing upon Jeffrey Cohen’s seven theses of monstrosity and the connection of the feminine to monstrosity generally, I argue, following Barbara Creed, that the female cyborg is a monstrous figure and that she that differs in significant ways from her male counterpart.

Everyday Intimate Machines: Human Interaction with Sociable Robots

Below is my submission for this year's SSHRC competition:

Everyday Intimate Machines: Human Interaction with Sociable Robots

The quest to create ever more sophisticated robots is intensifying globally. Increasingly lively, autonomous, interactive, and anthropomorphic robots are making their way from industrial and commercial contexts into everyday human social life (Menzel and D’Aluisio, 2000). Automated teller machines (ATMs) have given way to domestic service robots (e.g. iRobots: the Roomba Discovery Vacuum), robotic dolls (e.g. Ugobe’s: Pleo; Sony’s: AIBO), therapeutic pets (e.g. Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology’s: Paro, the robotic seal), companion-bots (e.g. Sega’s: EMA, Eternal, Maiden, Actualization robot), and highly advanced sociable-robots designed to engage in socially situated learning (e.g. MIT’s: Nexi, a Mobile, Social, and Dexterous robot). Human-robot interaction studies compellingly demonstrate that humans readily and routinely engage emotionally with technology (Turkle et al., 2006; Fong, Nourbakhsh, Dautenhahn 2003; Duffy 2003; Gratch et al., 2002; Breazeal, 2002; Cassell et al., 2000; Reeves and Nass, 1996). Yet other researchers express concern over the moral veracity of human-robot interaction, suggesting that such relations may lead to psychological impoverishment (Kahn et al., 2004), or are disconcertingly inauthentic and therefore morally problematic (Turkle et al., 2006) and risk fundamentally altering the nature of social interaction, giving rise to a potentially “synthetic social society” (Zhao, 2006, p. 402). Sociable robots require investigation because “they are not a medium through which humans interact, but rather a medium with which humans interact. Acting as human surrogates, humanoid social robots extend the domain of human expression, discourse and communication...” (ibid.). Thus, the main research question for my doctoral studies asks: “How do sociable technologies (e.g. sociable robots) function as social products: artefacts, environments, services, and systems through which new social relationships are created?” Guided by Turkle’s (concept of the ‘evocative object’ (2007, 1995, 1984), I explore the extent to which relationships with even simple sociable robot provokes new thinking, including questions about alive/not alive; person/nonperson; human/machine and what is particular to being human in a highly technologized world.

I align my work with theorizers of science and technology who note the absence of the constructedness of subjects and objects, resemblances and differences, and the embodied grounds of knowing and action within artificial intelligence (AI) work (e.g. Kember, 2003; Brooks, 2002; Adam, 1998 & 1994; Balsamo, 1996; Suchman, 1987; Dreyfus, 1963). Recent AI projects have shifted orientation toward embodied learning and social situationedness, evident in such descriptions as: “...a sociable robot is able to communicate and interact with us, understand and even relate to us, in a personal way. It should be able to understand us and itself in social terms” (Breazeal, 2002, p. 1).

The title “Everyday Intimate Machines” foregrounds my object of study as affective technological artefacts situated within domestic practices in the micro-social context of everyday life. Variously referred to as friendly machines (Crowley and Kanda, 2005), socially intelligent robots (MacDorman and Ishiguro, 2006) and relational artefacts (Turkle et al., 2006; Turkle, 1995, 1984), the sociable robot is designed to express the desire “to be attended to, of wanting to have their ‘needs’ satisfied, and of being gratified when they are appropriately nurtured” (Turkle et al., 2004). Some scholars regard the sociable robot as a new medium of communication that affects the way we see ourselves and relate to others and “extend new possibilities for expression, communication and interaction in everyday life” (Mayer, 1999, p. 328; see also Zhao, 2006; Turkle et al., 2006). Thrift (2004) suggests that sociable robots represent a site beyond conventional structures and sites of communication, while Hegel et al. (2008) contend that sociable robots serve as a new interface between humans and technology.

Orona (1997) notes, “grounded theory provides a framework for taking observations, intuitions, and understandings to a conceptual level and provides the guidelines for the discovery and formulation of theory” (p. 182). Using grounded theory (Corbin and Strauss, 1990; Glaser and Strauss, 1967) and complementary qualitative research methods, my project explores domestic practices that include relations with a constellation (or ecology) of technology (e.g. laptops, Roombas, social robots). Dealing with such little understood phenomena as sociable robotics in the home, it is improbable to “develop precise and fixed procedures that will yield stable and definitive empirical content” (Clarke 1997, p. 65; see also Clarke, 2008). Beginning with sensitizing concepts (Padgett, 2004; Glaser, 1978), “those background ideas that inform the overall research problem” (Charmaz, 2003), these guiding concepts are tested, improved, and refined (Blumer, 1954) within the research context, while the interrelationships between the concepts help construct theory “that better capture and reflect the empirical terrain” (Clarke 1997, p. 65). In this project, evocative objects, emotional machines, and robot ethics provisionally constitute sensitizing concepts.

Data collection involves traditional qualitative methods conducted in natural settings (Turkle et al., 2006; Lull, 1980) through observation and conversation with social technology users (Forlizzi et al., 2007, 2004; Forlizzi and DiSalvo, 2006) organized around participant observation and in-depth interviews. Ethnographic approaches permit the researcher to comprehend as completely as possible, with minimal disturbance, relevant communicative and socio-cultural habits of the research participants (Bruyn, 1966; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Data collection will also include virtual methods, such as on-line observations and email interviews as well as documentary sources including those in the printed and electronic media (e.g. webpage contents, discussion threads in mailing lists, conversation in online chat room etc.).

Completed coursework at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communication provides a strong background in Science, Society, and Risk theory (Dr. William Leiss, Spring 2007); Somatechnics: Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and Technology (Dr. Susan Stryker, Fall 2007); and Frankfurt School: A Critical Theory of Culture, Communication and Society (Dr. Shane Gunster, Winter 2008). Additionally, my comprehensive exam areas (in progress) provide me with a deep theoretical grounding in the areas of ‘feminist perspectives on science and technology’ and ‘theories of technology and society’. My senior supervisor, Dr. Jan Marontate together with committee members Dr. Kirsten McAllister (Technology, The Body, Knowledge, Summer 2004) and Dr. Peter Chow-White (Social Construction of Communication Technologies, Fall 2007) will provide solid guidance in my research. Since beginning my doctoral studies at Simon Fraser University, I have maintained a consistent GPA of 4.00 (“A”). I am also one of the volunteer founders and editors of Stream: Culture/Politics/Technology, a peer-reviewed, open-access e-journal published by the Communication Graduate Student Caucus at Simon Fraser University.

Over the course of this year (2008), I have complemented my studies with conference presentations in line with my research interests. Notably, I have presented at (1) Canadian Communication Association. “Hacking, Hacktivism and Women: Hacking the Shadow Myth of Technology,” University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (June 2008); (2) The 1st Annual Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships. “Looking Forward to Sociable Robots,” Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands (June, 2008); and (3) The 6th Global Conference Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil. “Abject Cyborg Woman,” Mansfield College, Oxford, UK (September, 2008). I would like to note that “Looking Forward to Sociable Robots” has been submitted for a special issue of International Journal of Social Robotics and “Abject Cyborg Woman” is nominated as a selected conference paper to be developed for future publication. Finally, as an undergraduate student I co-authored an article which originated from a course paper entitled, The Ever Entangling Web: A Study of Ideologies and Discourses in Advertising to Women (Journal of Advertising, 28(2), 33-49) which has subsequently been republished as a chapter in the book Readings in Advertising, Society, and Consumer Culture (2007). As co-author, I conducted all of the semi-structured long interviews, transcribed, and assisted in the writing, editing, and revising process.

I am on schedule to begin this dissertation by mid 2009. My hope is to better understand the socio-cultural impact of emerging sociable robots as they continue their encroachment into intimate spaces through therapeutic, emotional, social, companion, and surrogate relationships with human-users. With the increasing number of service robots currently in operation, combined with forecasted demographic shifts in Japan, Europe, and the North America it is clear that there is a rapidly increasing ecology of “machines to live with” (Thrift 2004, p. 470; Brooks, 2002). This study will contribute to emerging scholarship that seeks to make sense of interactions between people and sociable robots outside the laboratory and “in the wild” (Sabanovic et al., 2006) and will contribute to understanding how people will negotiate with sociable robots’ within progressively intimate spaces.

Bibliography

Adam, A. (1994). Embodying knowledge: a feminist critique of artificial intelligence. The European Journal of Women’s Studies. 2, 355-377.

Adam, A. (1998). Artificial knowing, gender and the thinking machine. New York: Routledge.

Balsamo, A. (1996). Technologies of the gendered body: reading cyborg women. Durham: Duke University Press.

Blumer, H. (1954). What is wrong with social theory? American Sociological Review, 18, 3-10.

Breazeal, C. (2002). Designing sociable robots. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Brooks, R. (2002). Robots: the future of flesh and machines. London: Allen Lane.

Bruyn, S. (1966). The human perspective in sociology: the methodology of participant observation. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.

Cassell, J., Sullivan, J., Prevost, S., and Churchill, E. (2000). Embodied conversational agents. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Charmaz, K. (2003). Grounded theory: Objectivist and constructivist methods. In Strategies for qualitative inquiry, Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y. (eds.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 249-291.

Clarke, A. (2008). The social worlds framework: a theory/methods package. In The handbook of science and technology studies, Hackett, E., Amsterdamska, O., Lynch, M., and Wajcman, J (eds.). Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 113-137.

Clarke, A. (1997). A social worlds research adventure. In Grounded theory in practice, Strauss, A. and Corbin, J., (eds.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications

Corbin, J., and Strauss, A. (1990). Basics of qualitative research: grounded theory procedures and techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Cowley, S. and Takayuki K. (2005). Friendly machines: interaction-oriented robots today and tomorrow. Alternation. 12, 79-106.

Dreyfus, H. (1963). What computers can’t do: a critique of artificial reason. New York: Harper & Row.

Duffy, B. (2003). Anthropomorphism and the social robot. Robotics and autonomous systems 42(3), 177-190.

Fong, T., Nourbakhsh, I., and Dautenhahn, K. (2003). A survey of socially interactive robots. Robotics and autonomous systems. 42(3-4), 235-243.

Forlizzi, J., DiSalvo, C., and Gemperle, F. (2004). Assistive robotics and an ecology of elders living independently in their homes. Journal of HCI Special Issue on Human-Robot Interaction, 19(1), 25-59.

Forlizzi, J. and DiSalvo, C. (2006). Service robots in the domestic environment: a study of the roomba vacuum in the home. In Proceeding of the 1st conference on Human-robot interaction, ACM Press, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Forlizzi, J. (2007). How robotic products become social products: an ethnographic study of cleaning in the home. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE international conference on Human-robot interaction, Arlington, Virgina, 129-136.

Glaser, B. G. (1978). Theoretical sensitivity: Advances in the methodology of grounded theory. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press.

Glaser B. and Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. Chicago: Aldine.

Gratch, J., Rickel, J., André, E., Cassell, J., Petajan, E., and Badler, N. (2002). Creating interactive virtual humans: some assembly required. IEEE Intelligent Systems 17(4), 54-63.

Hegel, F., Krach, S., Kircher, T., Wrede, B., and Sagerer, G. (2008). Understanding social robots: a user study on anthropomorphism. The 17th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 574-579.

Kahn, P., N. Freier, B. Friedman, R. Severson, and E. Feldman (2004). Social and moral relationships with robotic others? In IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 545-550. Kurashiki, Okayama Japan.

Kember, S. (2003). Cyberfeminism and artificial life. London & New York: Routledge.

Lull, J. (1980). Family communication patterns and the social uses of television. Communication Research, 7(3), 319-333

MacDorman, K. and Ishiguro, H. (2006). The uncanny advantage of using androids in cognitive and social science research. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 297-337.

Mayer, P (1999). Computer media studies: an emergent field. In Computer media and communication: a reader, P. Mayer (ed.). Oxford: University Press, 320-336.

Menzel, P. and D’Aluisio, F. (2000). Robo Sapiens: evolution of a new species. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Orona, C. (1997). Temporality and identity loss due to Alzheimer’s disease. In Grounded theory in practice. A. Strauss & J. Corbin (eds.). London: Sage publications, 171-196.

Padgett, D. (2004). Coming of age: theoretical thinking, social responsibility, and a global perspective in qualitative research. In The qualitative research experience, Padgett, D. (ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 297-315.

Reeves, B. and Nass, C. (1996). The media equation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Sabanovic, S., Michalowski, M., and Simmons, R. (2006). Robots in the wild: observing human-robot social interaction outside the lab. In International Workshop on Advanced Motion Control, Istanbul, Turkey.

Shibutani, T. (1955). Reference groups as perspectives. American Journal of Sociology, 60, 562–569.

Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and situated actions: the problem of human-machine communication. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Thrift, N. (2004). Electric animals. Cultural Studies, 18(2), 461-482.

Turkle, S. (1984). The second self: computers and the human spirit. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: identity in the age of the internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Turkle S., Breazeal, C., Scasselati, B. and Dasté, O. (2004). Encounters with kismet and cog: children’s relationships with humanoid robots. In Proceedings of IEEE Humanoids 2004.

Turkle, S., Taggart,W., Kidd, C., and Dasté, O. (2006). Relational artefacts with children and elders: The complexities of cybercompanionship. Connection Science, 18(4), 347-361.

Turkle, S. (2007). Evocative objects: things we think with. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Zhao, S. (2006). Humanoid social robots as a medium of communication. New Media & Society, 8(3), 401-419.

RoboEthics

The further a device is removed from human control, the more authentically mechanical it seems, and the whole trend in technology has been to devise machines that are less and less under direct human control and more and more seem to have the beginning of a will of their own. A chipped pebble is almost part of the hand it never leaves. A thrown spear declares a sort of independence the moment it is released. (Asimov, 1981, p. 154)

Many highly sophisticated robot projects are presently in development. The UK’s National Health Service has already used robots called Da Vinci and Zeus to perform surgeries at Guy’s and St. Thomas Foundation Trust in London (Habershon and Woods, 2006; Wilson, 2006). Advanced versions of humanoid robots are expected to assume domestic responsibilities and assist in the care of the elderly and children in as few as 20 years. At Tokyo’s University of Science, visitors are greeted by a robo-receptionist dressed in a university uniform who is capable of answering questions and appears to grow bored in the absence of something to occupy herself (Doherty, 2007). So-called nursebots are expected to be functioning in Japanese hospital wards and will be capable of ensuring patients have taken their medication and alert other medical staff if a patients vital signs appear to deteriorate (Doherty, 2007).

As robotics becomes a leading field in science and technology, the nascent field of roboethics, (ethics applied to robotics governing the design, construction, and use of the robots) has also emerged. There is a growing chorus of voices that insist that as robots are created with increasingly more intelligence and autonomy, society must start considering the way our evolving human-robot relationships inevitably open up to larger debates relating to the obligations and responsibilities we ought to have toward our machines and our machines toward us.

Such dialogue has already begun, evidenced in the emergence of such initiatives as the Euron Roboethic Roadmap, developed by more than 50 scientists and technologists, in many fields of investigations from sciences and humanities who are responding to the perceived need for discussion and development of an ethical framework that may eventually serve as a useful guideline for the design, manufacturing, and use of robots.

Similarly, the South Korean Robot Ethics Charter is a highly anticipated document set to be released sometime in early 2009. The South Korean Charter is a first attempt by a panel of futurists, science fiction authors, government officials, robotics professors, psychology experts and medical doctors to develop a preliminary “set of ethical guidelines concerning the roles and functions of robots, as robots are expected to develop strong intelligence in the near future” (Chang-Won, 2007; Yoon-Mi, 2007).

But the field is anything but set, with differing and conflicting views about the future status of robots in play, each outlook dictating its own unique ethical frame. For example, if robots are regarded as nothing more than smart machines or clever tools, questions of consciousness, free will, and agency simply do not emerge and neither do questions of obligation and responsibility. Under such a view, Asimov’s three laws of robotics would suffice as a guiding ethical outline.

However, some roboethicists insist that these tenets are not appropriate “for our magnificent robots. These laws are for slaves” (Coleman, 2001; Gips, 1995, p. 243). Alternatively, robots imagined as a ‘magnificent’ new species suggests that machines will ultimately “exceed in the moral as well as the intellectual dimension” (Veruggio, 2006, p. 24, italics in original). Therefore we require ethical approaches that move beyond classical moral theory and are better able to deal with emerging, yet to be resolved, ethical/moral problems related to the surfacing of new technological subjects that can no longer be easily classified as mere tools but perhaps as new species of agents, companions, and avatars (Floridi and Sanders, 2001).

Whether you find the idea of human and robot co-mingling intriguing or horrendous, one thing is for certain, the future of robots will doubtlessly include them being ever more intelligent, interactive, and intimate and as such, situations are sure to arise in which we do not have adequate ethically based policies in place to guide us. The probability that robots will be widely accepted in some social and cultural spaces seems incontestable. Indeed, roboethicists imagine that the humanoid robot will be used as sexual surrogates in settings which will range from sexual entertainment to sexual therapy (Veruggio, p. 37). Says Robert J. Sawyer, Canadian science fiction writer, “What’s weird is how biological entities change their behaviour when in the company of robots. When robots start interacting with us, we’ll probably show as much resistance to their influence as we have to iPods, cell phones, and TV” (quoted in Nickerson, 2007). At the same time others insist that we live in a time in which “ethic as usual” will not suffice. Related, researchers have begun to question the moral veracity of human-robot relationships, suggesting that such relations risk being psychologically impoverished from a moral perspective (Kahn et al., 2004) or disconcertingly inauthentic and therefore morally problematic (Turkle et al., 2006). As the future increasingly promises to look like a scene out of Asimov’s I-Robot, it is my fervent hope that we take seriously Donna Haraway’s plea that we take pleasure as well as responsibility in our coupling with new technology.

Sources:

Chang-Won, L. (2007). South Korea draws up code of ethics for robots. Agence France Presse. Accessed August 7 2007. Newswire.

Coleman, K.G. (2001). Android arête: Toward a virtue ethic for computational agents. Ethics and Information Technology, 3, 247-265.

Doherty, G. (2007). Rise of the machines. Irish Independent. Accessed May 16 2007. Newspaper Database.

Floridi, L. and J.W. Sanders (2001). Artificial evil and the foundation of computer ethics. Ethics and Information Technology, 3, 55-66.

Gips, J. (1995). Towards the ethical robot, In K Ford, C. Glymour and P. Hayes (Eds.). Android epistemology (pp. 243-252), Menlo Park: AAAI Press/MIT Press.

Habershon, E. and R. Woods (2006, June 18, 2006). No sex please, robot, just clean the floor. Sunday Times, 11.

Kahn, P., N. Freier, B. Friedman, R. Severson, and E. Feldman (2004). Social and moral relationships with robotic others? In IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 545-550. Kurashiki, Okayama Japan.

Nickerson, C. (2007, November 16). With robotic bugs, larger ethical questions: Advances affect ties of human, machine. The Boston Globe, A1.

Sawyer, R.J (2007). Robot Ethics. Science, 318(5853), p. 1037.

Turkle, S., W. Taggart, C. Kidd, and O. Daste (2006). Relational artifacts with children and elders: The complexities of cybercompanionship. Connection Science, 18(4), 347-361.

Veruggio, G. (2006). Euron roboethics roadmap. In EURON Roboethics Atelier. Genoa.

Wilson, D. (2006). Rise of the robot. The Age, November 9, 4.

Yoon-Mi, K. (2007). Korea drafts robot ethics charter. The Korea Herald. Accessed April 28 2007. Newspaper.

EMA: Feminizing the Robot

Sega's newest robotic companion is named EMA (Eternal, Maiden, Actualization), a first-generation robotic girlfriend. Designed to overcome the stereotype of robots as rough, tough, and battling, she is a feminized robot type, designed to walk and talk like a female as well as behave in a sweet and interactive way. Her target love market is the 20-something Japanese male looking for companionship. Says Sega Toys spokeswoman Minako Sakanoue of EMA,"She's very lovable and though she's not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend."

EMA can sing, dance and even hand out business cards - but what makes EMA a truly intimate machine is that she is designed with a 'love mode' program that switches on after her infrared sensors detect and verify a blushing face nearby. At which time EMA will provocatively tilt her head upwards and utter the sound "chyu" or kiss (in Japanese).

Her name, EMA, connects in interesting ways with Japanese spiritual practice as well as Japanese history of robotics. In Japanese religious culture, ema refers to small wooden plaques on which Shinto worshipers write their prayers or wishes. The ema were left behind, hung at a Shinto place of worship, in the hopes that kami (spirit or god) would read them. According to Shinto belief, robots are not vastly different from humans in that they both share the same vital energies or forces, also called kami, that are present in all aspects of the world and universe. Giving 'ema' became popular around the Edo period (1600-1867), roughly the same historical moment when humanoid robots in Japan first emerged.

The history of the humanoid robot in Japan may also be traced back to the Edo Period and the masterful craft of constructing karakuri (meaning 'trick,' 'mechanism' or 'gadget') that were widely known and adored by the Japanese public. The most famous karakuri depicts a delightful child engaged in a traditional Japanese act of hospitality: green tea service. Thus, the character of the relationship between human and robot from the earliest period was interactive and social. “This unique interactivity makes the windup tea-serving doll a social-machine, in which the main purpose, like the Japanese humanoid robots that are its natural descendants, is communication with human beings” (Hornyak, 2006, p. 21). These early social robot informed the way Japanese culture subsequently came to regard robots.

Thus, the idea of a robotic girlfriend may not be regarded in the same way in Japan as in more Westernized cultures which tend to characterize female robots as hyper sexual but certainly not sweet and demure (think: female Borg Queen, Replicants and Cylons). Conversely, in Japan the view of robots as an extension of family, is evident even in early robot history, a perspective conveyed by Makoto Nishimura, creator of Japan’s first modern robot, built in 1928. “If one considers humans as the children of nature, artificial humans created by the hand of man are thus nature’s grandchildren” (Nishimura quoted in Hornyak, 2006, p. 38).

Japanese humanoid robots are typically regarded as and referred to ‘as’ persons, not ‘as if’ they were persons. This sensibility is evident right down to the lexicon of the Japanese language and the use of certain suffixes, such as kun (for boys) and chan (for girls and boys). These suffixes express a sense of endearment, intimateness, sweetness, and child-like or diminutive status and often reflected in the names of Japanese social robots (Robertson, 2007, p. 375). In short, humanoid social robots are conceived and marketed as “as adopted members of a household” (p. 382).

EMA will enter the personal robotics market in September, 2008 at a cost of approximately $175.00 US. It would seem that EMA, like Pleo (a companion robo-dinosaur), Paro (a companion and therapeutic robo-seal) and AIBO (a companion robo-dog) marks another moment in the steady evolution toward ubiquitous robot-companions.

Sources

Hornyak, T. (2006). Loving the machine: The art and science of Japanese robots. Tokyo; New York: Kodansha International.

Robertson, J. (2007). Robo sapiens Japanicus: Humanoid robots and the posthuman family. Critical Asian Studies, 39(3), 369-398.

Sega Creates Robot Girlfriend

Sega's Sexy New Female Robot Sings, Dances, Kisses

MIT's Social Robot: Nexi

Quote of Day: Rodney Brooks, MIT Professor and celebrated robotics researcher:

I don't think there is going to be one single sudden technological “big bang” that springs an Artificial General Intelligence into “life.” Starting with the mildly intelligent systems we have today, machines will become gradually more intelligent, generation by generation. The singularity will be a period, not an event. (Source: I, Rodney Brooks, Am a Robot)

Nexi is a MSD robot, which means she is Mobile, Social, and Dexterous. Like other MIT sociable robots before her, Nexi is designed to explore socially situated learning and to support research and education goals in human-robot interaction and teaming. Nexi represents another step toward sophisticated, intelligent robots being capable of interacting with humans based on verbal instructions. Nexi's face can display a wide range of facial expressions, video cameras and microphones enable her to see and hear, and eventually Nexi will have mobility made possible by a Segway transporter type device.



Nexi is a sophisticated and impressive robot to be sure, yet she is also perceived as aesthetically 'scary', 'emo,' 'creepy,' and 'sad' looking. Nexi's appearance is somewhat of a departure for the MIT social robot projects (Kismet, Leonardo, The Huggable) which tends to favor non-humanoid yet cute and engaging figures. Still, Nexi's enlarged head and decidedly inorganic (i.e. metallic) body seem to be (to me) a continuation of the Kismet aesthetic I have written about previously and may reflect a (Western) cultural bias toward aesthetics that lead away from the uncanny valley and deeply embedded cultural fears of monstrous machines (baby-like figures as an antidote to Frankenstein mythology?).

Nexi certainly makes it easier to visualize the look and feel of increasingly social (and domestic) robots performing assistive, therapeutic and affective roles within health care, eldercare and education. Henrik Christensen, director of the newly formed Robotics and Intelligent Machines Center in the Georgia Tech College of Computing suggests that personal robots will enter our everyday life in two ways, "One is the robotic personal assistant that may cost as much as an automobile. The other is through the addition of specific robot functionality to standard household equipment." Christensen cites iRobot's Roomba home vacuum cleaner as a low-cost example of things to come.

Conference Updates...

June 5th: I presented my paper: Hacking, Hacktivism and Women: Hacking the Shadow Myth of Technology at the 2008 CCA Annual Conference hosted at UBC. I feel very fortunate to have presented on a wonderful panel comprised of:

Sara Grimes, PhD Candidate, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University
Deconstructing the Girl Gamer: From the "Girls' Games Movement" to "Rule of Rose" and,

Eva Nesselroth-Woyzbun, PhD Student, Ryerson University
The cake is a lie: Defying the dysfunctional matriarch in the game “Portal.”
.....

June 13th: I recently returned from the Netherlands, where I presented: "Looking Forward to Sociable Robots" at the 1st International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships. The conference program included 19 papers and a panel discussion covering a range of human-robot relationship dimensions, including:
* Robot Emotions
* Robot Personalities
* Gender Approaches
* Affective Approaches
* Psychological Approaches
* Sociological Approaches
* Roboethics
* Philosophical Approaches

The media interest was keen, with an entire section of the conference seating reserved for media from Canada, Spain, Netherlands, and beyond.

Stories about the conference have emerged in such publications as the Chronicle of Higher Education:

How to Turn On a Robot

By INGRID NORTON

A man decides whether to purchase a sexbot that can say no. A female robot visits a psychiatrist to cope with an abusive human partner. A traveler stops for directions and wonders afterward if she spoke to a robot or a human.

According to presentations at the First International Conference on Human-Robot Personal Relationships, such scenarios aren't far off. This month academics from around the world met at the University of Maastricht, in the Netherlands, to discuss a not-so-distant future when robots care for the elderly, participate in the military, and are used as sex partners. One speaker gave her talk from California via a robot-mounted view screen.

The conference was organized by David Levy, author of Love and Sex With Robots. In about 40 years, Levy expects artificial intelligence to have progressed to the point where human-robot dating will be commonplace.

"Being loved by a robot?" Levy says. "It sounds a bit weird, but someday, for many, many people, being in love with a robot will be just as good as love with a human."

Conference attendees grappled with other issues of a complicated, roboticized future: Will having perfect, compliant robots make us less patient with vexing human relationships? Will using female robots for cleaning promote gender stereotypes? If you force your robot to have sex with you, is it rape?

Ron Arkin, a professor of computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology who participated in the conference, says the questions aren't spurious. Just as pornography provided incentive for the development of video recording and the Internet, Arkin says, sex will drive robotic developments. "It's gonna be here before we know it," he says. "If the questions aren't asked, the technology will just show up on your doorstep."

Other stories include:

When Robots Live Among Us (Discover: Science, Technology and the Future)

In 2050, Your Lover May be a...Robot

Who's Mating Whom? (The Times of India)

.....

Some of my favorite presentations included:

• Dr. Ronald Arkin (Georgia Institute of Technology) presented a paper on the, "Ethical Aspects of Personal Human-Robot Interaction."

• Professor Sally Wyatt (Universiteit Maastricht) presented interesting insights from feminist theories of technology and STS perspectives to the field of human-robot personal interaction in a talk entitled: "Me Robot, You Jane."

• Dr. Anne Foerst (St. Bonaventure University, New York) presented "The Community of Human and Non-Human Persons."

Erotic Machines: Automata and Love Dolls

“I was now about to form another being of whose disposition I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness…and she…might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation…She might also turn with disgust from him to the superior beauty of man…trembling with passion, tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged… I left the room, and locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own heart to never resume my labours” (Mary Shelley, 1818, p. 158-159).

The image of the erotic artificially created woman has deep cultural and historical roots. Her significance has been, above all, anchored and shaped by cautionary narratives about the unintended consequences of knowledge transgression. Artificial woman appears in Greek mythology through the story of Prometheus as the ‘beautifully evil’ Pandora. Fashioned upon the anvil of Hepheastos, Pandora stands as the prototype for all mechanical women who follow her, as well as the punishment against Prometheus for stealing fire (knowledge) from the gods. The erotic artificial female also appears within fifteenth century Jewish golem mythology, although unlike her male counterpart, the female golem is strictly a concubine. Substituting a ‘real’ woman, the female golem’s primary purpose was to fulfill the sexual desire of her creator. Mechanical women, as erotic objects of desire, appear in literary works as well, perhaps most famously in the stories of Villiers’ Tomorrow’s Eve and Hoffman’s Der Sandman from which theories of the uncanny was worked through. Although referred to only briefly in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the threat implied by the creation of the artificial woman (i.e. the destruction of the entire human race) stands as a central, familiarly Pandoran, warning in the novel.

The use of sexual surrogates has a long history which, for women, includes the electromechanical vibrator. It was invented in the early 1880s and used to treat a range of female sex related ailments which collectively came under the heading of hysteria for which orgasm was taken to be the most effective treatment (Levy, 2007, p. 220; see also Maines, 1999). Sexual surrogates for men, often take the form of love dolls utilized for sexual pleasure among men were first written about in Japanese literature in the late seventeenth century. The mechanism described was an artificial vulva, called azumagata, Japanese for woman substitute. Formed out of tortoiseshell or leather with an entrance lined with velvet or silk, this mechanism replicated a woman’s labia major. Some versions of the azumagata were of entire female bodies. These versions were sometimes called doningyo, meaning doll body (Levy, 2007, p. 237). Paul Tabori describes the doningyo, “A man who is forced to sleep alone can obtain pleasure with a doningyo. This is the body of a female doll, the image of a girl of thirteen or fourteen with a velvet vulva. But these dolls are only for people of high rank. Another name of the doll body is even more outspoken: tahi-joro – ‘traveling whore’” (Tabori, 1969 in Levy, 2007, p. 237, italics in orginal). These dolls, sometimes referred to as Dutch Wives, are believed to have originated with the leather dolls brought aboard Dutch merchant ships starting at around the seventeenth century. The Japanese interacted with Dutch merchants on the trade island of Deshima, established by the Dutch East India Company in 1641. Through the relationship between traders the Japanese became familiar with this sexual practice (Pate, 2005; see also Levy, 2007, p. 249).

During the Golden Age of the Automaton (1750-1850), erotic mechanisms flourished, evident in popular and expensive erotic watches, naked dancers, and sexually explicit clockwork women destined for private showrooms and the Orient (Landes, 1983). Together, these automata constitute the covert and fetishist side of the eighteenth century automaton even as they were proclaimed to be the very symbol of the Enlightenment. The Silver Dancer was one such erotic automaton. Although she was not used for sexual pleasure in the same way the azumagata or the tahi-joro were, that is to say in a physical sense; her function was primarily to provide erotic visual entertainment for her observer.

Love dolls were used extensively among sailors while they travelled during the late nineteenth century. These dolls were referred to as dames des voyage (traveling women) by the French. In Austro-Germany they were referred to as sailors’ sweethearts. These dolls were created in a woman’s form and most often made out of cloth or straw. In Europe during the early 1920s, lady travellers continued to be marketed toward naval officers. These replicas of female vaginas were inflatable to a desired ‘tightness’ and then could be deflated for discreet storage. Alternatively, these dolls could be custom ordered in life size dimensions based upon a submitted photograph or in accordance with directions as to preferred height, weight, hair color and so on (Levy, 2007, p. 238).

Infamous stories from the early 1920s include a love doll owned by avant-garde artist Oskar Kokoschka in the exact image of his former married lover, Alma Mahler. Kokoschka attended to every detail of his doll, shopping and dressing her in the latest Parisian fashion, but ultimately the doll failed to fulfill his erotic desire and he decapitated her one night during a garden party (Roos, 2005). Similarly, Hedy Lamarr speaks of an ex-lover in her memoir, named Sam, who had a love doll fashioned in her exact likeness. Sam is said to have fallen into deep emotional despair after their love affair ended. Lamarr describes witnessing Sam having sex with his Hedy-the-Inferior, as he called her, and submitted that it did seem to bring him a measure of comfort (Levy, p. 240-241).

Advances in materials science have enabled sex doll manufacturers to improve significantly on the inflatable products of the preceding decades. This has resulted in the creation of such life like dolls as the RealDoll which currently costs approximately $5,000-$7,000 CAN. Today, Japan leads the way in high priced sex dolls with its first all doll escort agency opening in 2004. Called Doll no Mori (Forest of Dolls), this brothel features love dolls rather than organic sex trade workers. Citing cheaper labour costs and low initial overhead, the company boasts that it made its initial start up costs back within the first month of operation (Connell, 2004).