Hello, Robot: Design Between Human and Machine

This updated edition of Vitra's 2017 publication presents recent developments in robotics and digitization

This volume investigates how robotics has become an integral part of life: in industry, in the military and in everyday settings; at nurseries and retirement homes; in our bodies; when shopping and when having sex; in video games and in films and in literature. In a series of in-depth essays and interviews, experts including science-fiction author Bruce Sterling and the design duo Dunne & Raby explore what an increasingly digital environment means for us humans. They highlight our often-ambivalent relationship to new technologies and discuss the opportunities and challenges they pose for us as individuals and as a society. Hello, Robot broadens the scope of debate to include the ethical and political questions arising from technological advances in robotics today, and confronts us with the contradictions that often underpin the answers to these questions.