Lisa Nocks: Historian of IEEE History Center

Android Science Fiction as Gedankenexperiment:

By the early 21^st century, the initiative to develop humanoid robots that had begun in Japan in the 1960s had spread to research labs around the world. Researchers repeated to the press the mantra that after all, why bother to convert human spaces like homes and care institutions to accommodate robots, when it might be possible to develop intelligent robots that could operate in a human environment? 

The social challenges of integrating humanoid robots or androids into human society had been described in science fiction for many decades, and a number of robotics researchers have acknowledged the influence of science fiction on their career paths. These stories not only described the technical innovations that would make this possible, but operated as a kind of thought experiment, considering the potential social, economic, and ethical challenges inherent in developing machines that could compete both intellectually and physically for the same environmental niche as humans.

This keynote focuses on how such issues played out in android stories written between the 1920s and the late twentieth century, when the first real humanoid prototypes were exhibited to the public.  

Biography:

Lisa Nocks, Ph.D. is a historian of science and technology at the IEEE History Center. Her research focus is the history of robotics and AI.  She is the author of The Robot: The Life Story of a Technology (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), which was named a top academic title by the American Library Association's Choice magazine. She is particularly intetrested in the reciprocal influences between technology and popular culture. Among her published articles are “That Does Not Compute: The Brittleness Bottleneck and the Problem of Semantics in Science Fiction” in Science Fiction and Computing: Interlinked Domains (McFarland); and  “Robots” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology, ed. by Hugh Slotten (OUP).

Dr. Nocks has lectured on a variety of topics at conferences around the world, and taught the histories of science, technology, and communication on the university level for many years before joining the IEEE History Center in 2017. Currently, she curates exhibits on the history of technology, writes articles and gives lectures on the history of electrical technologies for IEEE, and has served as an Industry Professor in the College of Arts & Letters at Stevens Institute, in addition to working with IEEE members to record and preserve their contributions to the history of technology. She helped to spearhead the History Center’s new Global Museum program, and has also served on the IEEE Tech Ethics Committee to support the IEEE mission of technology in service to humanity.

Email:

Address:New Jersey, United States

Karen Burham of IEEE Southeastern Michigan Section

Karen Burnham has participated in various science fiction conventions and conferences in different capacities. She served as the Vice President of the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, which holds an academic and writers conference each Spring in Florida. She was the head of the Academic track of Programming at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio, TX in 2013. She has also produced and hosted three podcasts: the Locus Roundtable, SF Crossing the Gulf with Karen Lord for SFSignal.com, and Small Blue Planet with Cheryl Morgan, all appearing at Locus Magazine’s website. In January 2017 she was the Science Guest of Honor at ConFusion in Michigan..

Biography:

Karen Burnham is vocationally an engineer and ‘avocationally’ a science fiction reviewer. She writes for venues such as Locus Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Cascadia Subduction Zone. She was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award for Non-Fiction in 2012 and 2014. She works as an electromagnetic scientist, engineer, and modeler in Colorado where she lives with her husband and two sons.

Email:

Address:Colorado, United States