Desire in the Age of Robots and AI: An Investigation in Science Fiction and Fact [Hardcover]

This book examines how science fictions portrayal of humanitys desire for robotic companions influences and reflects changes in our actual desires. It begins by taking the reader on a journey that outlines basic human desiresin short, we are storytellers, and we need the objects of our desire to be able to mirror that aspect of our beings. This not only explains the reasons we seek out differences in our mates, but also why we crave sex and romance with robots. In creating a new species of potential companions, science fiction highlights what we already want and how our desires dictateand are in return recreated by what is written. But sex with robots is more than a sci-fi pop-culture phenomenon; its a driving force in the latest technological advances in cybernetic science. As such, this book looks at both what we imagine and what we can create in terms of the newest iterations of robotic companionship.

Chapter 1. The Gears and Wires of Robot Sex.- Chapter 2. What Defines Reality?: Robot/Android Self-Knowledge and Authenticity.- Chapter 3. Incep Dates and Pleasure Models: Death, Life, and Love in Blade Runner.- Chapter 4. Angel Replicants and Solid HologramsBlade Runner 2049 and Its Impact on Robotics.- Chapter 5. Moving Toward an Acceptance of Robotic Sexuality through Sci-Fi.       

Gibsons book is a masterclass in how to analyze literature and film and turn them into useful bits of evidence for a larger ethnographic study. I would recommend Desire in the Age of Robots and AI for both undergraduate and graduate courses in Anthropology, Folklore, Sociology, Film Studies, Literary Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, Human Sexuality, and so much more. (Wayne Fife, Anthropologica, Vol. 63 (1), 2021)

Rebecca Gibson, PhD, is Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, USA. She speclӃ