Beyond Human: Living with Robots and Cyborgs

By Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre

Book Overview

Would your body work better with some artificial parts? Will you live longer, perhaps a lot longer, than you now expect? The next decade promises another qualitative shift in the way we view technology, as once purely fictional concepts--robots, cyborg parts, and the many variations in between--become part of reality.

Gregory Benford and Elisabeth Malartre's Beyond Human treats the landscape of human self-change and robotic development as poles of the same phenomenon. Can we go too far in making ourselves machine-like or making machines resemble us? Once made, what will such creatures think about us? These questions will arise in myriad ways in the next few decades, as we press against boundaries that a short while ago existed only in works of the imagination. Written in a lively and provocative style, this is a readable book about the accumulation of small scientific advances that add up to something large and challenging.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076531083X
• ISBN13: 9780765310835
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Great Introduction

Having read about 6 books on the subject, I found this to me one of the most accessible and interesting treatments on the subject. Great introductory book with big ideas.

The Future's Future Companion Guide

When the future "that's closer than you think" gets just a little closer, this book will be the Crash Course Companion guide to go with it. It will have to be, since most other books on the same topic involve a textual style that requires a great deal of heavy lifting. This book, however, is divided in nice, quick and easy to read anecdotal chapters. Speculative? Yes. Of course. It's the future we're talking about here. This book looks past the visible horizon line, advising that just because we can't see it, doesn't mean we won't. In fact, the Copyright date is 2007. Two years has passed and I've seen many of the questions (Robot Laws) re-surfacing in Wired Magazine. The Future may not be here, but when it gets print in Wired, it's easy to believe that it's just 'round the corner, waiting to go "boo" the moment we step into its shadows.