I
always recommend to authors and book publicists to read anything they get their
hands on when it comes to the news media.
It’s so important to expose yourself to publications and media outlets that you wouldn’t normally seek out, thereby allowing you to learn more about the
world we live in. I took my own advice
and recently purchased a copy of Foreign Affairs magazine. This bi-monthly publication cost $12 but it
reads well. The articles are probing and meaty.
The issue was dedicated to covering robots, focusing on work and life in
the age of automation.
Editor
Gideon Rose offered an interesting take on things, writing this:
“Something
is clearly happening here, but we don’t know what it means. And by the time we
do, authors and editors might well have been replaced by algorithms along with
everybody else. Until then, we offer these dispatches from the frontlines of
the robotics revolution.”
The
lead article, by Professor Daniela A. Rus, said this: “Yet
the objective of robotics is not to replace humans by mechanizing and
automating tasks; it is to find ways for machines to assist and collaborate
with humans more effectively. Robots are better than humans at crunching
numbers, lifting heavy objects, and, in certain contexts, moving with
precision. Humans are better than robots at abstraction, generalization, and
creative thinking, thanks to their ability to reason, draw from prior
experience, and imagine. By working together, robots and humans can augment and
complement each other’s skills.
“Still,
there are significant gaps between where robots are today and the promise of a
future era of “pervasive robotics,” when robots will be integrated into the
fabric of daily life, becoming as common as computers and smartphones are
today, performing many specialized tasks, and often operating side by side with
humans. Current research aims to improve the way robots are made, how they move
themselves and manipulate objects, how they reason, how they perceive their
environments, and how they cooperate with one another and with humans.”
Another
moving article, written by Wayne Pacelle, covered the subject of animal
welfare. He had this to say: “People’s
relationship with animals is fraught with contradictions. They express love and
appreciation for them and have enacted laws to forbid cruelty to them. The
United States is a pet-keeping society, with more dogs, cats, parrots, hamsters,
and other pets combined than people, and a $60-billion-a-year industry for their
care. Millions of Americans are engaged with wildlife in some way, and some of
their happiest and most transcendent moments are spent in unspoiled settings.
And yet at the same time, they exploit animals on a massive scale, with
billions of creatures killed or abused every year for food, clothing, research,
and other purposes.
“Americans
have become masters of distancing themselves from these more unpleasant uses of
animals, physically and linguistically separating them from the nation’s
consciousness and their conscience. On factory farms, operators call animals
“units of production”; in laboratories, they are “tools for research”; and in
wildlife management, they are “game” to be “harvested” on a “sustained yield
basis.” Such usage turns animals into objects or commodities, things that have
practical value but are themselves morally neutral or empty. And most consumers
end up getting a sanitized version of the product, with all evidence of its
animal origins or connections either masked or eliminated.
“Over
time, however, they—and we—may finally realize that it is possible to find
better, more humane ways to consume protein, conduct research, and be
entertained. There is no reason why our society cannot combine moral agency
with technological and social innovation to eliminate cruelty to animals as an
ordinary part of life. And when we have done so, we are likely to wonder why it
took so long and what all the fuss was about.”
Foreign
Affairs stimulates the reader like few magazines can. It goes in-depth and thoroughly explores an
issue or concept. Most magazines today
piece together short articles on a wide-variety of topics, usually soft news or
pop-culture features. If you want to see
your brain cells at work, read Foreign Affairs.
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