What's it like to be a robot?

Clifford Nass was my PhD advisor at Stanford, who I mentioned in this talk. His book changed my entire way of thinking about new technologies and the opportunities for understanding more about ourselves by looking at the (seemingly strange) ways that we respond to new technologies. Through an incredibly rich set of experiments, Cliff and Byron build a case for the many ways that people treat computers (and other media) as if they were real people, regardless of the fact that we know better. It's a delightfully fun, insightful read!

Michael Chorost's personal journey through having a cochlear implant and getting his software constantly upgraded is simply fascinating. He gives us insight into what it is like to be a real life cyborg. While we like to say that a human-robot world is science fiction, this book is what opened my eyes up to questions about how computational tools change the ways we perceive the world, make sense of the world, behave in the world, and treat each other.

Jonathan Sterne weaves a rich, social history of sound technologies that reminds us of how we use the latest technologies to define and re-define ourselves. While sound recordings are mundane technologies today, they were incredibly disruptive in the past. This history stands on its own, but it's also a source for drawing potential lessons for predicting the progression of today's distresses about artificial intelligence and robotics.