[Sci-tech-public] Fwd: STS Circle, September 28th - David A. Mindell (Please RSVP)

[David Kaiser]

Hi, all,

Please note that David Mindell will be discussing his new book this coming Monday (28 September) in the STS Circle at Harvard. Details below.

Congratulations to David on his new book!

best,
Dave

Begin forwarded message:

From: STS <sts at hks.harvard.edu<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu>>
Subject: STS Circle, September 28th - David A. Mindell (Please RSVP)
Date: September 21, 2015 4:13:47 PM EDT
To: Harvard STS Circle <harvard-sts at lists.ksg.harvard.edu<mailto:harvard-sts at lists.ksg.harvard.edu>>
Reply-To: STS <sts at hks.harvard.edu<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu>>







          STS Circle at Harvard
[cid:D460598C-EB55-40A5-9D6F-B4DCE501D5E9 at fas.harvard.edu]
David A. Mindell
MIT, STS

on

Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy
Monday, September 28
12:15-2:00 pm
Pierce 100F, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 29 Oxford Street

[cid:D460598C-EB55-40A5-9D6F-B4DCE501D5E9 at fas.harvard.edu]

Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP via our online form<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1sG90cy_pwfiAfN_3YsE173lv18MyQfGneuCUjEEaKVY/viewform?usp=send_form> before Thursday afternoon, September 24th.

Abstract: Despite the public interest in robotics and automation, press coverage and public commentary persist with a number of misconceptions that obscure important questions. Pilotless aircraft are referred to as “drones,” as though they were mindless automata, when they are actually tightly controlled by people. Robots are seen as isolated machines when in reality they are embedded in social networks.  “Automation” is said to replace human activities, when actually it alters them, often making them more complex. Robots are said to be “one software upgrade away from full autonomy,” when even today’s modest autonomy is shot through with human imagination and programming.

This talk, based on the author’s forthcoming book of the same name, distills these misconceptions into three mythologies: the myth of progress (that we evolve linearly from direct human involvement to remote presence, to fully autonomous vehicles), the myth of replacement (that machines take over human jobs one for one), and the myth of autonomy (that some robots will operate completely on their own). Decades of experience with robotics and remote presence in extreme environments undersea, in air, and in space, enable us to tell new kinds of stories, that, by seeing the present more clearly, better allow us to contemplate the future. The goal is to redefine the public conversation on automation and robotics.

Biography: David A. Mindell is Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing at MIT. He has twenty-five years of experience as an engineer in undersea robotic exploration, as a veteran of more than thirty oceanographic expeditions, and as an airplane pilot and engineer of autonomous aircraft. He is the award-winning author of Iron Coffin: War Technology and Experience Aboard the USS Monitor and Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight.



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_____________________________
David Kaiser
Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science
and Professor of Physics
Department Head, Program in Science, Technology, & Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
617 253-4062   dikaiser at mit.edu<mailto:dikaiser at mit.edu>
http://web.mit.edu/dikaiser/www

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