Overview
Karel Äapek's āR.U.R.ā and the Vision of Artificial Life offers a new, highly faithful translation by Å tÄpĆ”n Å imek of Czech novelist, playwright, and critic Karel Äapekās play R.U.R.: Rossumās Universal Robots, as well as twenty essays from contemporary writers on the 1920 play. R.U.R. is perhaps best known for first coining the term ārobotā (in Czech, robota means serfdom or arduous drudgery). The twenty essays in this new English edition, beautifully edited by Jitka ÄejkovĆ”, are selected from Robot 100, an edited collection in Czech with perspectives from 100 contemporary voices that was published in 2020 to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of the play.
Äapekās robots were autonomous beings, but biological, not mechanical, made of chemically synthesized soft matter resembling living tissue, like the synthetic humans in Blade Runner, Westworld, or Ex Machina. The contributors to the collectionāscientists and other scholarsāexplore the legacy of the play and its connections to the current state of research in artificial life, or ALife. Throughout the book, it is impossible to ignore Äapekās prescience, as his century-old science fiction play raises contemporary questions with respect to robotics, synthetic biology, technology, artificial life, and artificial intelligence, anticipating many of the formidable challenges we face today.
Contributors
Jitka ÄejkovĆ”, Miguel Aguilera, IƱigo R. Arandia, Josh Bongard, Julyan Cartwright, Seth Bullock, Dominique Chen, Gusz Eiben, Tom Froese, Carlos Gershenson, Inman Harvey, Jana HorĆ”kovĆ”, Takashi Ikegami, Sina Khajehabdollahi, George Musser, Geoff Nitschke, Julie NovĆ”kovĆ”, Antoine Pasquali, Hemma Philamore, Lana Sinapayen, Hiroki Sayama, Nathaniel Virgo, Olaf Witkowski
This book title, R.U.R. and the Vision of Artificial Life, ISBN: 9780262544504, by Karel Capek, Jitka Cejkova, published by MIT Press (January 16, 2024) is available in paperback. Our minimum order quantity is 25 copies. All standard bulk book orders ship FREE in the continental USA and delivered in 4-10 business days.
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