Robots are not only embedded in culture but also have the potential to contribute to the sustainability of cultural practices; this seems especially true for social robots, which are experienced as having social capacities. This chapter conceptualizes this cultural aspect of robotics by sketching a theory of cultural meaning of robots based on Wittgensteinian and narrative thinking, which gives robots not only a “passive” role as objects that are part of games and narratives available in our culture, but also more “actively” hermeneutic role as game changers and co-narrators. It also argues that these meanings and narratives are normatively and politically relevant as they are entangled with power. In particular, this chapter warns of forms of “robocolonialism” via technology transfer understood as involving the transfer of games and narratives. Proposing a normative and critical hermeneutics of technology, it encourages us—as citizens and as developers—to ask which games and stories we want to create, sustain, import, and export through robotics and other technologies.

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Cultural Robotics or Robocolonialism? Meaning, Narrative, and Power with Social Robots

  • Mark Coeckelbergh

摘要

Robots are not only embedded in culture but also have the potential to contribute to the sustainability of cultural practices; this seems especially true for social robots, which are experienced as having social capacities. This chapter conceptualizes this cultural aspect of robotics by sketching a theory of cultural meaning of robots based on Wittgensteinian and narrative thinking, which gives robots not only a “passive” role as objects that are part of games and narratives available in our culture, but also more “actively” hermeneutic role as game changers and co-narrators. It also argues that these meanings and narratives are normatively and politically relevant as they are entangled with power. In particular, this chapter warns of forms of “robocolonialism” via technology transfer understood as involving the transfer of games and narratives. Proposing a normative and critical hermeneutics of technology, it encourages us—as citizens and as developers—to ask which games and stories we want to create, sustain, import, and export through robotics and other technologies.