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Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and…
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Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology (edizione 2018)

di Adrienne Mayor (Autore)

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiCitazioni
1958138,235 (3.75)2
The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was exploring ideas about creating artificial life--and grappling with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, "life through craft." In this compelling, richly illustrated book, Adrienne Mayor tells the fascinating story of how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese myths envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices, and human enhancements--and how these visions relate to and reflect the ancient invention of real animated machines. As early as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues, and even ancient versions of Artificial Intelligence, while in Indian legend, Buddha's precious relics were defended by robot warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for real automata. Mythic automata appear in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are described as being built with the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools and statues. And, indeed, many sophisticated animated devices were actually built in antiquity, reaching a climax with the creation of a host of automata in the ancient city of learning, Alexandria, the original Silicon Valley.… (altro)
Utente:CGlanovsky
Titolo:Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology
Autori:Adrienne Mayor (Autore)
Info:Princeton University Press (2018), 304 pages
Collezioni:Read & Owned, A Personal Library
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Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology di Adrienne Mayor

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The premise looked interesting, but I'm just not all that interested in the details of Greco-Roman mythology, and the connections Mayor was making between ancient myths and modern stories of robots seemed pretty tenuous. I didn't get very far before I gave up. ( )
  Gwendydd | Apr 30, 2023 |
Adrienne Mayor explores concepts of artificial life in the ancient world of (mainly) Greece and Rome.

Talos is the obvious example, but apart from that I found myself going 'well, maybe, sort of' more often than with her other books. ( )
  Robertgreaves | Mar 23, 2022 |
I really enjoyed this meander through augmented life in Ancient Greek myths and reality, and the connections to later science fiction and technology. Anyone who doesn't appreciate ancient technological thought (and anyone who does) would enjoy these chapters. That said, the book can be repetitive, some of Mayor's assertions seem an interpretive stretch, and there's no strong overall thesis aside from being a thematic exploration. ( )
  hissingpotatoes | Jan 17, 2022 |
Do you like ancient mythology? Do you also like robots? Who doesn't? A cool look at robots and "made, not born" people/creatures from ancient mythology.
Mostly a look at greek myth, there's also a bit of middle eastern and asian myth in there too. It's also made me more interested in Medea and Daedalus who were just really cool.
There's some great creepiness that I love also - take the myth of the mortal Tithonus, whose immortal lover Eos asked the gods to grant him eternal life but forgot to ask for eternal youth as well. "When loathsome old age begins to weigh upon Tithonus, Eos despairs. In sorrow, she places her aged lover in a chamber behind golden doors where he remains for eternity. There, devoid of memory or even the strength to move, Tithonus babbles on endlessly. In some versions, Tithonus shrivels into a cicada, whose monotonous song is a never-ending plea for death." ( )
  katebrarian | Jul 30, 2020 |
I found the style of the German translation very hard to read, and gave up early.
  MarthaJeanne | Jul 16, 2020 |
In Gods and Robots, Adrienne Mayor analyses ancient evidence for artificial life, creatures “made, not born” (2), and the art of creating them, which she terms biotechne. Mayor concentrates on Greek, Roman, and Etruscan textual and material culture, with frequent comparisons to Indian, Chinese, and Babylonian sources, among others. For example, she compares the Pygmalion myth to a Buddhist story about a mechanical woman used to seduce a painter, who retaliates by creating a tromp l’oeil of his own suicide (111).

Mayor weaves together this ancient material with stories from SF (science/speculative fiction) and the current science of artificial life to make a vigorous case for how we should interpret artificial life in ancient cultures. Rather than being “animated by magic or divine fiat,” she argues, “these special artificial beings were thought of as manufactured products of technology, designed and constructed from scratch using the same materials and methods that human artisans used” (2). This puts Mayor at odds with a number of other scholars, including myself (as she acknowledges, 22), who contend that at least the earliest automata, including the self-moving tripods and golden maids created by Hephaestus in Homer’s Iliad, were probably understood as magical. On Mayor’s reading, these automata are much closer to modern robots, androids, and replicants than scholars have so far recognized.
 

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"I sometimes wonder whether robots were invented to answer philosophers questions" Tik-Tok
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For my brother, Mark Mayor
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The first "Robot" to walk the earth - in Ancient Greek mythology - was a bronze giant called Talos
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The first robot to walk the earth was a bronze giant called Talos. This wondrous machine was created not by MIT Robotics Lab, but by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention. More than 2,500 years ago, long before medieval automata, and centuries before technology made self-moving devices possible, Greek mythology was exploring ideas about creating artificial life--and grappling with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, "life through craft." In this compelling, richly illustrated book, Adrienne Mayor tells the fascinating story of how ancient Greek, Roman, Indian, and Chinese myths envisioned artificial life, automata, self-moving devices, and human enhancements--and how these visions relate to and reflect the ancient invention of real animated machines. As early as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues, and even ancient versions of Artificial Intelligence, while in Indian legend, Buddha's precious relics were defended by robot warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for real automata. Mythic automata appear in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are described as being built with the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools and statues. And, indeed, many sophisticated animated devices were actually built in antiquity, reaching a climax with the creation of a host of automata in the ancient city of learning, Alexandria, the original Silicon Valley.

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Adrienne Mayor è un Autore di LibraryThing, un autore che cataloga la sua biblioteca personale su LibraryThing.

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