Don Norman Book Review - Brendan

Emotional Designs, Donald A. Norman
Ch 7 The Future of Robots

This chapter looked at how society has historically viewed the future of robots with some focus on the rules governing them. A fairly famous example is Asimov's Four laws...

Asimov’s Four Laws of Robotics:
  1. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
  2. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  3. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  4. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov assumes central control structure vs modern distributed control.

Common fear that robots will take over routine jobs... historically new waves of technology displace workers but total result is increased life expectancy and quality of living for everyone with increased jobs.

During transitional periods people displaced by the technology are unemployed.

Truly autonomous robots may have more major disruptions of life, humans vs cyborgs vs robots... positives outweigh negatives.