cultural robotics: on the intersections of identity and autonomy in people and machines

In this paper, we introduce the phrase “cultural robotics” to refer to the interdisciplinary analysis of autonomous machines and their mutual construction with society: as culture constructs robots, they are (re)constructing us. The objects we study range from industrial manufacturing devices to socially-intelligent robots (SIRs), and our disciplinary frameworks include humanities-oriented approaches –cultural anthropology and graphic design in particular—as well as cybernetics and computational sciences. We will examine the cultural significance of two SIRs portrayed in pop culture, analyze the socio-technical history of autonomous devices such as the master-slave circuit, and explore the ways in which such observations might contribute to efforts such as participatory design (discussed here in terms of Bennett’s “interactive aesthetics”). We conclude with a recent case study in which racial identity and robot design had direct intersections. Like Haraway and Latour, we aim to prevent either technocentric or human-centric perspectives from dominating the analysis. It is our hope that more democratic and sustainable ways of designing and using robots can emerge from this view of hybridity and co-evolution between social and technical worlds.