Degrees of Freedom Update 1: Preorder Launch Sale!

Preorder Sale… and how to read the book for free!

Degrees of Freedom is now available for pre-order on websites like Bookshop.org ($90), The MIT Press Bookstore ($75), Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Of special note, Barnes & Noble Rewards and Premium Members get 25% off all pre-orders from April 23rd through 25th with coupon code PREORDER25, and Premium Members get an additional 10% off, meaning that for the next three days, the book is ~$56, ~$49 for B&N Premium members. So, if you’re hoping to buy a physical copy of the book, I’d recommend pre-ordering it via B&N this week.

However, $49 is still a lot for a book for most people, so while I’d love for you to use this opportunity to preorder the book at a more reasonable price, please be aware that once the book is published, the PDF version will be available FOR FREE on the MIT Press website. Once the link to the Open Access version is up online, I'll share it in this newsletter.

PREORDER NOW WITH CODE PREORDER25 →

About the Book

Since this is the first newsletter, Let me share some of the basic details about the book: What's the book about, and who's it for?

What's the book about?

Most people initially assume that issues like race and gender are irrelevant to robotics. This book shows that nothing can be farther from the truth. The book shows how the history of robots, from their first appearance in literature to their first appearance on factory floors, is entirely wrapped up in issues of race and slavery… and how today's robots are designed — sometimes intentionally — in ways that reinforce systems of white and patriarchal power in varied and extreme ways. Robotics students aren't taught this, tech ethics students aren't taught this, and really, it's something anyone studying anything related to robotics and AI should really be aware of. So I wrote a book about it, in hopes that the next generation of students and faculty really understand these issues so that we can work together to ensure our robots subvert rather than reinforce injustice. In more formal terms…

In Degrees of Freedom, I explore critical questions at the intersection of robotics and social justice. I consider the ways in which roboticists design their robots’ appearance, how robots think and act, how robots perceive people, and the domains into which robots are deployed. The book highlights not only the ways roboticists tend to reinforce white patriarchal power structures, but also how roboticists might instead subvert those power structures by applying theories and methods from a diverse range of fields.

Drawing on computer science; history and politics; law, criminology, and sociology; feminist, ethnic, and Black studies; literary and media studies; and social, moral, and cognitive psychology, the book connects questions of robot design with larger abolitionist movements by presenting a vision for a more socially just future of robotics.

Who is the book meant for?

I am hopeful that this book will be widely read by researchers (e.g., faculty and graduate students) in the field of Human-Robot Interaction, and that it will be adopted (either in whole or in part) into technology ethics courses across computing, robotics, and sociology. The book is academic, but it's not a textbook: it should be accessible and interesting to the types of readers who enjoyed books like Data Feminism, Race After Technology, Dark Matters, and Artificial Whiteness.

So if YOU are a student, a teacher, or just academically interested in technology ethics, social justice, and robotics, preorder the book now at Barnes & Noble using code PREORDER25, or sit tight for the link to the Open Access version!

Thanks for reading,

Tom

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For more information on Tom Williams, visit his personal website at tomwilliams.phd

For more information on Tom’s lab, visit MIRRORLab.mines.edu