Robo Sapiens Japanicus. Robots, gender, family and the Japanese nation by Jennifer Robertson (4.8🌟)

I discovered this book back in 2019 at the AI exhibition at the Barbican centre. I first grabbed the book because of its title. I love everything Japanese and I am always interested in reading about technology, particularly about robots, cyborgs and transhumanism. But then I read the synopsis in the back cover and I almost jumped when I saw that it was an ethnography and a sociocultural study. This is my preferred, if  not favourite, approach to reading about technology.

Anyway, the book did not disappoint. It was a great read. Before reading the book I had always been curious about how the japanese seemed to manage a perfect balance between tradition and culture on one side and modernity on the other.  Two opposites in my mind. I wondered about how the Japanese society could be so open to so much technology everywhere, in real life and in fiction  (books,  anime,  games). Now, after reading Robo Sapiens Japanicus I have a much better idea. 

Robertson explains how the government has been promoting Innovation 25, a plan to modernise Japan adopting even more technology at home including domestic robots. She tracks down the foundations of this plan to events and policies in the 1940s, including the use of Manga characters to disseminate the government's discourse about how Japanese family should be.   Robertson thoroughly analyses the historical and cultural elements, and motivations of the government to promote such a discourse in the present. One of the motivations that got stuck in my head is that the use of robots in households will encourage Japanese women to have babies. Obviously the government is worried about the ageing population and believe women will opt to have a family if they are freed from the burden of domestic work (which can be carried out  by robots). This "solution" seems simplistic to say the least. As Robertson explains, there are sociocultural and historical reasons why women nowadays are refusing to have babies and even marry.

There is much more in this book, embodiment and gender, robot rights, cyborgs, etc. 

I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in technologies from a sociocultural perspective.

The book was published by University of California press in 2018. 192 pages of content plus extensive notes, bibliography and notes. 

Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier (4🌟)

Jamaica Inn is a gothic novel set in early 19th century in the south of England. It contains elements of thriller despite its slow paced narrative.

Mary Yellan moves with her aunt and her husband at Jamaica Inn, a dreadful place where horrible things happen. No one dares to stop by or even talk about it. Evil lives there. The young womam arrives at the inn, ignorant and naive. Du Maurier sets the mood of the story right away. Dark, gloomy, unwelcoming. At the inn she is received by a horrible bad mannered man, her uncle and a fearful woman. Her aunt has changed a lot. She has aged and is not the shadow of her former lively self. Slowly the author uncovers bits and pieces about the characters's personalities and their secrets. Mary regrets her decision to go live with her aunt. Now she wants to leave and take the old lady with her. However this might prove impossible after she witnesses some frightening events.

Opinion: not as good as Rebecca or My Cousin Rachel but I liked it a lot. Although the story is gripping I found it hard to read more than 2 or 3 chapters a day. Most of the story revolves around the relationship between the protagonist and her horrid uncle as she comes to know about what he does for a living. However there are few scenes between them, including a couple which are crucial. I think I liked this as it kept the mystery of the uncle alive throughout the novel. Loved the atmosphere and the setting. The moors the marsh and the isolation of the Inn. There was another creepy character who caught my attention and who was at heart of the mystery of the novel. During Maurier kept me wandering about their role and motivations until the end.

My edition is another hardback published by Virago in its Virago Modern Classics collection. It has 302 pages and includes an introduction  y Sarah Dunant which I enjoyed reading.

2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C Clarke (4🌟)

This is science fiction at its best. The novel relies on the strength of Ideas, all of which could be possible. Ideas about aliens and our evolution. About space travel and exploration. And about Artificial Intelligence, consciousness and sentience.

The story stars with ape men and a huge monolith. Aliens teaching apes how to use tools. Fast forward hundreds of thousands of years and we have humanity exploring the solar system and finding a monolith hidden in the moon. Who built it and why did they leave it there? More happens and then there is evidence of another monolith in one of saturn moons. Now, a small crew is sent to explore in a state of the art spaceship guided by an artificial intelligence called HAL.

My beautiful edition is from the Folio Society with 209 pages.

The Brain. The Story of You by David Eagleman (3.6🌟)

The Brain. The Story of You is a non technical journey through the various aspects of the brain and how those aspects shape us and our way of living. 

Very interesting read. It explains how the brain works, how we become what we are, how it perceives reality, how we control our body and actions and how we make decisions.

I particularly liked chapter 5 Do I need you? There is a section explaining how the human brain is wired to be social. How humans come together into groups to survive. It also explains how humans are also selective and look for similarities between them. This discussion led the author to explain, to a certain extent, how humans can become genocidal.

I also enjoyed the last chapter, chapter 6, which deals with fixing and or replacing senses as well as creating new ones, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Immortality. .