Robot

Lisa Nocks is a historian who writes on the diffusion of scientific and technical knowledge to the public through the media. She has authored a number of articles on the history of media technologies and essays on the relationship between science fiction and science. She is currently teaching at Fordham University, Rose Hill, in the department of Communication and Media Studies.

Concise and direct to the point, Nocks' technography on the robot offers a rich overview of the systems we understand as robotic. It summarizes the 30-some year-long history of a plethora of ideas, experiments, and implementations that have found their places in our everyday lives. . . . Kudos to the author on the perfect marriage between coverage and length in this volume. In fewer than 200 pages, one finds great essays that do not leave too much out. Everything relevant to robotics today can be found here, albeit in an introductory form. But that is exactly what this book aims to achieve: to give us the grand picture of a grand technology, and motivate us to explore further. Highly recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduates through faculty.