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beltsquid's review against another edition
slow-paced
1.5
A meandering sampling of technology in ancient myth that seldom has an argument and frequently spins its wheels and haphazardly makes use of contemporary tech buzzwords--at one point, Mayor expresses that ancient parade goers would have had a "uncanny valley-like" response to fountains of milk and wine. Uncanny Valley is a very specific term about high-fidelity human simulacra provoking negative/fearful reactions in audiences, it's not interchangeable with "awe." At other times she slips into irrelevant tangents about contemporary fiction or videogames that add nothing to her argument or exist entirely to pad the word count. There's an entire paragraph that's a loose summary of the game "The Talos Principle" and the citation in the back of the book refers to the Cisco systems cybersecurity group which is also named Talos. The entire book is riddled with this kind of nonsense and it comes off as a desperate attempt to hitch Classics to the Silicon Valley hype bubble--the epilogue chapter is particularly guilty of this. I've found Mayor sloppy and willing to make broad leaps in logic before (her celebrated "Protoceratops = a griffin" is given way too much credence for something that amounts to 'yeah i guess maybe that could have happened'), but this is on another level.
There are rare sections that are interesting and even good, but not enough to justify the entire book.
There are rare sections that are interesting and even good, but not enough to justify the entire book.
suzumemizuno's review against another edition
4.0
Todos los libros de Adrienne Mayor exploran ideas fascinantes y que no se tocan casi nunca en Historia, al menos no de forma intensa, y este no es la excepción. A pesar del título, los robots como tal no son el centro de la investigación. Mayor está interesada en establecer paralelismos sobre nuestra búsqueda de la inmortalidad y la construcción de IAs con la filosofía y los mitos griegos (aunque también de otras zonas como China e India. ¡Una lástima que no hable más de ellos!), demostrando que ninguna de nuestras ideas es nueva y que siempre nos preocupan los mismos problemas. Ya en el pasado se planteaba la dicotomía de si las ginoides de Hefesto tenían, o no, conciencia, y si eso las volvía seres vivos que respetar. Un dilema que nos debe resultar familiar respecto a las inteligencias artificiales y su, en principio, inminente llegada.
Así, el libro puede ser un poco repetitivo porque en cada capítulo trata de examinar siempre las mismas "ideas", antes que explorar a fondo los mitos que está narrando. Sin embargo, es una muy buena lectura que descubre elementos de la mitología que podemos no haber considerado (o ni siquiera conocer) y que nos descubre una tecnología documentada que precede con mucho a la Revolución Industrial.
Así, el libro puede ser un poco repetitivo porque en cada capítulo trata de examinar siempre las mismas "ideas", antes que explorar a fondo los mitos que está narrando. Sin embargo, es una muy buena lectura que descubre elementos de la mitología que podemos no haber considerado (o ni siquiera conocer) y que nos descubre una tecnología documentada que precede con mucho a la Revolución Industrial.
bluestjuice's review against another edition
4.0
Did ancient Greeks, in the midst of their philosophical, mystical, and scientific musings, contemplate the possibility of artificial life, artificial intelligence, humanoid automatons, or self-driving technology? Mayor delves into these questions with a canny, clear-eyed survey of ancient Greek thought, picking through mythological examples of magical devices and persons to identify examples of biotechnology, people or animals fabricated and given life through mechanical (even if sometimes magi-mechanical) means, rather than simply divine force of will. Not everything she touches on here is a robot per se, but her approach is ideological rather than literal, tracing the beginnings of human thought on artificial life even in an environment where the technological prowess that would be required bordered on unthinkable. Along the course of the exploration we encounter Talos, a bronze automaton defender in the shape of a man (with a lethal weakness to be exploited), Pandora, the divinely-constructed woman-shaped trick played on the human world, Pygmalion's ivory-sculpted-sex-doll, explorations into the significance of extending or augmenting human life, and many other topics. Mayor wraps up with a survey of some actual technological marvels along these lines dating to the same period, reminding us that the ancients were more technologically adept and inventive than we sometimes give them credit for.
shawnwhy's review against another edition
4.0
very interesting look into the minds of technically oriented ancient people and how they thought about reproducing nature and man; through their myths and legends about craftsmen and crafty gods.
also peppered in alot of idoosycratic stuff that the author likes such as the new blade runner movie and of all thins.. Laputa.. the Iron Maiden/pandora/Metropolis analogies are very interesting too
also peppered in alot of idoosycratic stuff that the author likes such as the new blade runner movie and of all thins.. Laputa.. the Iron Maiden/pandora/Metropolis analogies are very interesting too