Domo arigato, Mr Roboto

The Economist
SHINTOISM is an animist religion. Its adherents believe that all things, from lampshades to leopards, can possess living spirits. This fact is often trotted out to explain Japan’s fascination with robots. And where America’s mechanical beings tend to menace the human race (think HAL and Terminator), Japan’s are more often its saviours (as Astro [...]

Rise of the machines

The Economist
EVER since Karol Capek, a Czech playwright, used the term in the early 1920s to describe artificial people, robots have usually appeared in popular culture with human characteristics and made by big companies. There was the Model B-9 Environmental Control Robot in “Lost in Space”; Rosie, the robot maid in “The Jetsons”; C-3PO in [...]