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Artificial humans were always there, moving and sleeping amongst us. Their first traces are in the ancient myths of Prometheus and Pygmalion. In the eighteenth century they took the form of mechanical dolls, forerunners of the hi-tech Japanese robots of our own day produced in the engineering labs of Waseda and Osaka Universities. The authors follow the track of these humanoid constructs through various countries and across more than two thousand years of history, reflecting on the ideas that spawned them (Descartes, Leibniz, LaMettrie) and the social, technological and medical developments that accompanied and to a great extent explain them.
List of contents
Contents: Mythological origins - History of androids, cyborgs and replicants - Descartes, Leibniz, LaMettrie and the man-machine discussion - Dissecting corpses, prosthetics and xeno-transplantation - Clones, military robots, and artificial women - Artificial intelligence research and its critics - The social background and development of the machine age - Film history (Frankenstein, Metropolis, Blade Runner etc.).
About the author
Horst Albert Glaser, Professor für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Essen, beschäftigt sich seit mehr als dreißig Jahren mit der Person und dem Werk des Marquis de Sade.
Sabine Rossbach ist PD für Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft und Neuere Germanistik an der Universität des Saarlandes und der Universität Triest/Italien. Zahlreiche Veröffentlichungen.
