Telepresence: Actual and Virtual explores the history of telepresence from the 1948 developments of master–slave manipulation, through to current telepresence technology used in space, undersea, surgery and telemedicine, operations in nuclear and other hazardous environments, policing and surveillance, agriculture, construction, mining, warehousing, education, amusement, social media, and other contexts. It also describes the various operator hand and body controls and the corresponding telerobotic actuation of robotic hands, arms, and locomotion. This book reviews the sensing and control technology, its history and likely future, and discusses the many research and policy issues that are raised. The book also takes up key questions relating to social and ethical issues, given that a person’s mechanical reach is becoming unlimited, enabling one to perform mischievous or harmful acts without identification, and what that portends for future developments in telepresence, including regulation and recommended directions of development. The primary audience for this book is professionals interested in human–robot interaction, human factors engineering, virtual reality, applications to space and undersea exploration, telemedicine and telesurgery, firefighting, mechanized agriculture, policing, drone surveillance, warehouse parts' fetching, mining, and military operations.
The reputation of Thomas Sheridan has probably suffered from the occasional ridicule of his longtime friend and collaborator Jonathan Swift. Nevertheless, Swift valued Sheridan's wit and company immensely, and the verse-warfares in which the two friends often indulged were not always won by Swift." "Sheridan was not only one of the most memorable Dubliners of the early eighteenth century. Convivial, charming, highspirited, and feckless, he was also a prominent schoolmaster (the best in Europe, according to Swift), cleric, translator, playwright, essayist, and a prolific writer of accomplished light verse. Called Tom Pun-Sibi, or Tom the Punster, because of his droll essay The Art of Punning, he poured forth a seemingly endless stream of punning satires, verse letters to his friends, and satirical observations on the Dublin of his day." "For all of his prolific output, only some of his Swift poems have remained in print, and they are in various editions of Swift's verse. This volume gathers together for the first time Sheridan's complete poetic works, including those published as broadsides or in contemporary journals and those contained in unpublished letters and manuscripts. Of particular interest for such a social poet is the inclusion of poems to and about Sheridan by his many friends and very vocal enemies."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This book presents theories and models to examine how humans interact with complex automated systems, including both empirical and theoretical methods. Provides examples of models appropriate to the four stages of human-system interaction Examines in detail the philosophical underpinnings and assumptions of modeling Discusses how a model fits into "doing science" and the considerations in garnering evidence and arriving at beliefs for the modeled phenomena Modeling Human-System Interaction is a reference for professionals in industry, academia and government who are researching, designing and implementing human-technology systems in transportation, communication, manufacturing, energy, and health care sectors.
This is a study of God as a concept, not from the perspective of any religious tradition, but rather as belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing and loving supernatural entity as has prevailed through the ages. The book reviews arguments throughout history for and against the idea of such a God. One unique perspective is to ask what can be modeled about God in denotative language of rationality (much as modeling in science, medicine and economics) in contrast to connotative language (e.g., myth, metaphor, art and music). Since the early Greeks there have been skeptics concerning God, with progressively more questioning since the Enlightenment. Today’s “new atheists” are seen as being even more assertive, and as having little respect for religious and philosophical traditions and the natural longing for some kind of supreme being. However, as demographic trends continue to diminish the influence of the church, there is opportunity for atheism to gain respect by respecting the beliefs of others. The book ends with some considerations of what it means to respect others’ beliefs and cultural traditions without abandoning a sincere disbelief in a supernatural being.
This book presents theories and models to examine how humans interact with complex automated systems, including both empirical and theoretical methods. Provides examples of models appropriate to the four stages of human-system interaction Examines in detail the philosophical underpinnings and assumptions of modeling Discusses how a model fits into "doing science" and the considerations in garnering evidence and arriving at beliefs for the modeled phenomena Modeling Human-System Interaction is a reference for professionals in industry, academia and government who are researching, designing and implementing human-technology systems in transportation, communication, manufacturing, energy, and health care sectors.
Telepresence: Actual and Virtual explores the history of telepresence from the 1948 developments of master–slave manipulation, through to current telepresence technology used in space, undersea, surgery and telemedicine, operations in nuclear and other hazardous environments, policing and surveillance, agriculture, construction, mining, warehousing, education, amusement, social media, and other contexts. It also describes the various operator hand and body controls and the corresponding telerobotic actuation of robotic hands, arms, and locomotion. This book reviews the sensing and control technology, its history and likely future, and discusses the many research and policy issues that are raised. The book also takes up key questions relating to social and ethical issues, given that a person’s mechanical reach is becoming unlimited, enabling one to perform mischievous or harmful acts without identification, and what that portends for future developments in telepresence, including regulation and recommended directions of development. The primary audience for this book is professionals interested in human–robot interaction, human factors engineering, virtual reality, applications to space and undersea exploration, telemedicine and telesurgery, firefighting, mechanized agriculture, policing, drone surveillance, warehouse parts' fetching, mining, and military operations.
This is a study of God as a concept, not from the perspective of any religious tradition, but rather as belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing and loving supernatural entity as has prevailed through the ages. The book reviews arguments throughout history for and against the idea of such a God. One unique perspective is to ask what can be modeled about God in denotative language of rationality (much as modeling in science, medicine and economics) in contrast to connotative language (e.g., myth, metaphor, art and music). Since the early Greeks there have been skeptics concerning God, with progressively more questioning since the Enlightenment. Today’s “new atheists” are seen as being even more assertive, and as having little respect for religious and philosophical traditions and the natural longing for some kind of supreme being. However, as demographic trends continue to diminish the influence of the church, there is opportunity for atheism to gain respect by respecting the beliefs of others. The book ends with some considerations of what it means to respect others’ beliefs and cultural traditions without abandoning a sincere disbelief in a supernatural being.
This book is the culmination of 15 years of research and travels that have taken the author completely around the world twice, as well as on other travels in the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and around the Pacific rim. Its purpose has been to try to understand the role of cultural differences within nations and between nations, today and over centuries of history, in shaping the economic and social fates of peoples and of whole civilizations. Focusing on four major cultural areas(that of the British, the Africans (including the African diaspora), the Slavs of Eastern Europe, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere -- Conquests and Cultures reveals patterns that encompass not only these peoples but others and help explain the role of cultural evolution in economic, social, and political development.
An eminent psychologist and engineer presents a provocative analysis of the concept of God through the lens of scientific inquiry. This is a study of the concept of God, not from the perspective of any religious tradition, but as a pervasive social phenomenon that has prevailed through the ages. An expert in engineering and applied psychology, author Thomas B. Sheridan offers unique perspective on the subject. In What Is God?, he asks whether the concept of God can be modeled in denotative language (much as modeling in science, medicine and modern professions) in contrast to connotative language (e.g., myth, metaphor, art and music). Sheridan adopts the assumption of model-based reality, as currently prevalent in physics and some branches of philosophy. That criterion means an entity can be called real for public discourse purposes only to the extent that a credible model can be made of what the entity is or how it works—as opposed to the private reality of thoughts, perceptions, or dreams. What follows is a truly provocative and enlightening through experiment with far-reaching implications. “It is rare to see the ultimate question of God as prime mover examined as a problem open to rigorous scientific inquiry. Thomas Sheridan has now done it with admirable clarity.” —Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Meaning of Human Existence
For the past three decades, the author and his colleagues in the MIT Man-Machine Systems Laboratory have been carrying out experimental research in the area of teleoperation, telerobotics, and supervisory control - a new form of technology that allows humans to work through machines in hazardous environments and control complex systems such as aircraft and nuclear power plants. This timely reference brings together a variety of theories and technologies that have emerged in a number of fields of application, describing common themes, presenting experiments and hardware embodiments as examples, and discussing the advantages and the drawbacks of this new form of human-machine interaction. There are many places - such as outer space, the oceans, and nuclear, biologically, and chemically toxic environments - that are; inaccessible or hazardous to humans but in which work needs to be done. Telerobotics - remote supervision by human operators of robotic or semi-automatic devices - is a way to enter these difficult environments. Yet it raises a host of problems, such as the retrieval of sensory information for the human operator and how to control the remote devices with sufficient dexterity. In its complete coverage of the theoretical and technological aspects of telerobotics and human-computer cooperation in the control of complex systems, this book moves beyond the simplistic notion of humans versus automation to provide the necessary background for exploring a new and informed cooperative relationship, between humans and machines.
A sweeping history of early American trade and the foundation of the American economy "We could have no better guide than Truxes explaining incisively how American colonial merchants enriched their communities through licit and illicit trade, and how this enrichment was the product of slavery and the slave trade."--Nicholas Canny, author of Imagining Ireland's Pasts In a single, readily digestible, coherent narrative, historian Thomas M. Truxes presents the three hundred-year history of the overseas trade of British America. Born from seeds planted in Tudor England in the sixteenth century, Atlantic trade allowed the initial survival, economic expansion, and later prosperity of British America, and brought vastly different geographical regions, each with a distinctive identity and economic structure, into a single fabric. Truxes shows how colonial American prosperity was only possible because of the labor of enslaved Africans, how the colonial economy became dependent on free and open markets, and how the young United States owed its survival in the struggle of the American Revolution to Atlantic trade.
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