Every Monday morning the magazine's editorial and design staff gathers in a corner conference room near our warren of cubicles. There, overlooking the ring of trees surrounding Frost Amphitheatre, we sip coffee, munch pastries and talk about what's happening Out There. The idea is to ignite dialogue about trends and events that might lead us to a story with a Stanford connection.
In recent weeks we've discussed partisanship and governance, the state of marriage, the future of research, whether we could beat Oregon without a passing game. And robots.
I must disclose here that I have a thing for robots. One of my favorite toys as a kid was an oval-headed robot based on the B-9 model from the TV show Lost in Space. When you pushed the top of his head, he exclaimed in a manly voice, "Danger, Will Robinson!" or "That does not compute." He had all the attributes I associated with robots—loyalty, courage and unimpeachable character. He could do no wrong. It was the humans who were screwed up.
Robots have come a long way since then, and not only in popular culture. And they aren't necessarily benevolent and protective. Within a few minutes, our Monday-morning group had come up with half a dozen story ideas on the technological wizardry, societal impacts and cultural implications of the robot revolution. The result was a kind of robopalooza in this issue. Devoting so many pages to one topical area is unusual for us. Few subjects are broad enough or, frankly, interesting enough, to warrant multiple stories in one issue of the magazine. But robots cover a lot of ground.
Start with what a robot is. We spent a sizable chunk of some meetings arguing over whether this or that really qualified as a robot. One of our contributors, privacy scholar Ryan Calo, points out that robots date back to the ancient Greeks, who constructed a "programmable" device that could move forward and backward and turn itself without any human involvement. It didn't have much utility, but it must have been a cool conversation piece at B.C.E. 60 dinner parties. But is that a robot? Finally, we settled on a definition: For our purposes, a robot is an autonomous machine that doesn't require human intervention to perform its basic functions. So a driverless car is a robot. A remote control drone is not. According to us. (Feel free to send us indignant letters standing up for the non-robots.)
Today robots are as likely to mimic bugs or birds as they are people. They are being developed at the nano scale, which opens all sorts of wondrous possibilities—medical treatments and diagnostic uses are two good examples. But the ability to shrink robots to tiny sizes while still delivering enormous capacity also hints at possible sinister uses, such as covert surveillance. There is a lot to think about and keep an eye on.
Robots are going to change our lives, of that you can be sure. Whether flying overhead, performing housework or identifying disease, they will present opportunities as well as dilemmas, new solutions and new problems. Someday soon, you may own one. It would be good to know what the price might be.
Kevin Cool is the executive editor of Stanford.
