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Speaker: Timothy Hornyak
Topic: The Art and Science of Japanese Robots
When: Starting at 6:30 p.m. on Sunday, 22 July 2007
Admission: Buy a copy of Loving The Machine from Good Day Books. Timothy N. Hornyak moved to Japan in 1999 after working as a freelance science and technology journalist in Montreal, Canada. He has worked at the international desk of Kyodo News in Tokyo, and has written about Japanese culture, technology, and history for Scientific American, Far Eastern Economic Review, and other periodicals. He has also written for Lonely Planet and National Geographic.
A graduate of McGill and Carleton universities in Canada, Tim lived in South Korea while he did research for his graduate thesis on the issues involved in the reunification of South and North Korea. He has traveled throughout Japan and East Asia as a writer and photographer. His interest in robotics was sparked by a chance encounter with a Sony robot dog in a Tokyo showroom. Struck by
the sophisticated technology and lifelike behavior of the robot dog, he began researching robotics by attending robotics conventions and interviewing prominent roboticists. As a result of this research, Tim came to believe that the engineering of Japan's robotics is only one facet of the country's "robot culture," which also encompasses anime, manga, and other media. He then began investigating why the Japanese are so comfortable around robots and why the Japanese are so willing to accept robots as their partners and friends. The foundations of this love affair are complex and span fields as diverse as doll-making and demographics. Loving the Machine explores this relationship and explains why Japan will become the world's first society in which robots will work with and help people in their everyday lives.
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