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Edison's Eve : A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life by Gaby Wood (2002, Hardcover)

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About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group

ISBN-100679451129

ISBN-139780679451129

eBay Product ID (ePID)2078496

Product Key Features

Number of Pages336 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication NameEdison's Eve : a Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life

SubjectIntelligence (Ai) & Semantics, General, Robotics

Publication Year2002

TypeTextbook

Subject AreaComputers, Technology & Engineering, Science

AuthorGaby Wood

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height1.1 in

Item Weight15.3 Oz

Item Length7.8 in

Item Width5.7 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2002-025467

Dewey Edition21

Reviews"Distinguish[ed] throughout by astoundingly thorough researchâ€¦Gaby Wood's sprightly and imaginative book looks back to the time when science and entertainment, the study of life's mysteries and the attempts to build imitations of it, were one and the same. Her book itself is an ingenious miniature, a charming tour through some odd comers of scientific and cultural history, the development of lifelike automata, the history of the doll industry, the origins of cinema. It is also defiantlyand deceptivelywhimsical. In a few short chapters, Wood is taking on no less a theme than the industrialization of wonder." Jennifer Schuessler,New York Review of Books "Threaded throughout theses peculiar and fascinating stories are deeper questions about what it means to be human and what our historical desires to play God say about us; a philosophical area that is even more relevant todayâ€¦The book is less about tracking scientific strides toward artificial intelligence and more an illustration of the earliest seeds of ideas and the processes that often blurred the lines between science and magic." Cassandra Braun,Contra Costa Times "In this fascinating book, Wood invites the reader on a journey of exploration through the history and development of what we commonly refer to as robotsâ€¦This enjoyable book may affect you as profoundly as it did Mary Shelley: after viewing an early example of one of these mechanical marvels in the flesh, so to speak, she was inspired to writeFrankenstein." Netsurfer Digest "[A] haunting and elegant bookâ€¦Imaginativeâ€¦[Wood] makes you share a historian's delight in detailâ€¦Not the least of the pleasures of [Edison's Eve] is the way it captures the thrill of this simple and profound game between the human and the inanimate." Boston Phoenix "Embodying the confusions between what is 'lifelike' and what is alive, robots have always held an anxious fascination...Deftly balancing historical detail with provocative meditations on the reception accorded such marvels, Wood traces the...exotic particulars [in the] development of imitations of life." The New Yorker "â€¦Quirky, ambitious, well-researchedâ€¦[Wood] splashes happily among fascinating stories about different creators and their creations, from an android that plays the flute to an artificial duck that defecates." The San Diego Union-Tribune "Americans may think of Thomas Edison as the great inventor of the light bulb, but he did have a flop or two in his lifetime, as Gaby Wood reveals. Her charmingEdison's Everecounts the story of his attempt to make the first talking dollâ€¦Ms. Wood places this interesting failure within a history of experiments in automationâ€¦Examined as part of a continuum, these primitive robots raise the same questions: Why do scientists feel a need to replicate life? And why, when they fail, do they feel such shame'...The best parts of [Wood's] history need no analysis." John Freeman,Wall Street Journal "Fascinatingâ€¦A lively, elegant and surprising book, packed with curious details and enticing anecdotes." The New York Times Book Review "What makes you distinctly human? Is it your ability to calculate? To empathize'...Gaby Wood's new book,Edison's Eve: A Magical History of the Quest for Mechanical Life,engages the questions that have bedeviled philosophy since Descartes first mused that 'the body

IllustratedYes

Dewey Decimal629.8/92

SynopsisA rich and informative exploration of our age-old obsession with "making life." Could an eighteenth-century mechanical duck really digest and excrete its food? Was "the Turk," a celebrated chess-playing and -winning machine fabricated in 1769, a dazzling piece of fakery, or could it actually think? Why was Thomas Edison obsessed with making a mechanical doll-a perfect woman, mass-produced? Can a twenty-first-century robot express human emotions of its own? Taking up themes long familiar from the realms of fairy tales and science fiction, Gaby Wood traces the hidden prehistory of a modern idea-the thinking, hoaxes, and inventions that presaged contemporary robotics and the current experiments with artificial intelligence. Informed by the author's scientific and historical research, Edison's Eve is also a brilliant literary, cultural, and philosophical examination of the motives that have driven human beings to pursue the creation of mechanical life, and the effects of that pursuit-both in its successes and in its failures-on our sense of what makes us human.

LC Classification NumberTJ211.W65 2002