Degrees of Freedom Update 2: Title Explainer

Hi friend, 

It was great last week to finally see “Degrees of Freedom” on the cover of a book! Okay, so it was on the back cover of someone else’s book (accompanying my blurb for Ericka Johnson’s new book “How That Robot Made Me Feel”, shown below), but it was still an exciting moment! 

In today’s update, I’m going to share a little about the meaning behind the title of the book (“Degrees of Freedom: On Robotics and Social Justice”), as well as the meanings of the chapter titles.

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

The Title: Degrees of Freedom

I really love the title (“Degrees of Freedom”) because it works on so many levels. Degrees of Freedom is a technical term used in robotics to describe the axes of motion along which a robot can move in order to navigate and manipulate the world around it. Metaphorically, then, the title Degrees of Freedom evokes the axes of change along which roboticists might change the field of robotics to move toward a more equitable robotic future, as well as the hope that by doing so, robotics might move by degrees toward freedom and away from oppression.

Now, let’s dig into the meaning behind each of the chapter titles. As we do so, I’ll visually zoom in on different parts of the image above: the robot patent from 1868 (perhaps the first ever robot patent) that inspired the appearance of the first robot in literature only a few months later.

Chapter One: Secret Agents

This book is all about issues of power in robotics, so in the first chapter I begin by describing the type of power people typically talk about in robotics: interpersonal persuasive power. My lab has argued that interactive, language capable robots have unique persuasive power relative to other types of technologies because of their unique combination of moral and social agency. That is, while people may think of robots as just another type of technology, the robots they're accepting into their lives are, in fact, Secret Agents. This serves as the jumping off point to explore the new types of power discussed in the rest of the book.

Chapter Two: Black Servos, White Masks

The title of Chapter Two alludes to Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. In this chapter, I explore the history of robotics, investigating why the first real robot in engineering and literature was depicted in the form of a Black man; how the concept of the robot has evolved over time; and why robots look the way they do today. As I show, while robots have outwardly Whitened — now literally wearing White plastic masks — the way they are actually motivated and used (represented in the title metaphorically as their internal servomotors) continues to reflect their original motivation, as slave-like tools for perpetuating the White, patriarchal, capitalist power structures built up under the U.S. slave economy.

Chapter Three: Identity Crisis

The Identity Crisis alluded to in the title of Chapter Three is a crisis of both roboticist identity and of robot identity. I begin the chapter by showing how roboticists today continue to problematically wield social identity design cues: specific design choices that lead people to attribute particular racial and gender characteristics to robots, in ways that reinforce White and Patriarchal power structures. Then, I show how roboticists can work to resolve this Identity Crisis (in both senses) by subverting rather than reinforcing those inequitable power structures.

Chapter Four: Control System

In robotics, a Control System is used to determine the behavior of a robotic system in response to sensor data. For example, a control system might help to steer a manipulator (e.g., a robot gripper) in order to grasp an object. In this chapter, I move from the outward appearance of robots to their inner cognition, especially their moral cognition. As such, the title of this chapter refers to my exploration of the ways that autonomous moral decision making in robotics can serve to exert control over humans.

Chapter Five: Bounding Box

In robotics, a Bounding Box is a box drawn by a computer vision system around an object of interest located in an image. In this chapter’s title, the phrase is used to refer to the ways that computer vision systems place humans into boxes, and the ways that those systems shape the ways that the boundaries between human identity categories are drawn and negotiated.

Chapter Six: End Effector

In robotics, an End Effector is a gripper or other device affixed to the end of a robot’s arm so that it can interact with its environment, and thus effect changes in that environment. As this chapter focuses on ethical concerns surrounding police robots, the phrase is used here to allude to the ways that the police have been using robots to effect violent ends.

Chapter Seven: Future Tense

Finally, in the conclusion I shift the conversation from past and present to future. That is, while I begin the conclusion by summarizing the histories that explain the status quo of robotics, I then move to explore roboticists’ degrees of freedom, that is, the key tools available to roboticists who wish to rip up that status quo and work towards a more equitable robotic future.

Remind me, where can I pre-order Degrees of Freedom?

While the special pre-order sale is now over, Degrees of Freedom is still available for pre-order on websites like Bookshop.org, The MIT Press Bookstore ($75), Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. As a reminder, while I’d love for you to pre-order a physical copy of the book, 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 FROM BOOKSHOP.ORG →

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