Publisher's Synopsis
Robots and other advanced technologies will undoubtedly exert a profound influence on all aspects of life in the future. This book is the result of a conference involving computer experts and scholars from the social sciences, who met to discuss the deep concern felt about the social implications of rapid innovations in information processing. Among the issues raised were the effects of advanced technologies on the quality of life, and the dichotomy between the `information poor' and the `information rich' at both international and individual level. Hopes that robots will, paradoxically, make the world more human were expressed, the challenge being to use the technologies in an appropriate way but not to impose them.
