Robopocalypse: Online Author Talk and Discussion

Daniel H. Wilson
(Cherokee | Author and Robotics Engineer, Portland, Oregon)

Dec 16, 18:00, Zoom

Access here:
Thema: Guest Lecture, Daniel H. Wilson
Uhrzeit: 16.Dez..2021 06:00 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rom, Stockholm, Wien
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/81707743307?pwd=ak9YQmxqMVlKTXdnQXdvY0EzYWw0QT09
Meeting-ID: 817 0774 3307
Kenncode: 332291

Daniel H. Wilson is Cherokee author from Portland, Oregon. He is an award-winning, New York Times best-selling author and robotics engineer. He is the author of Robopocalypse, Amped, and The Clockwork Dynasty, among other publications.

He earned an M.S. in Robotics and in Machine Learning, and a Ph.D. in Robotics in 2005 at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His thesis work, entitled Assistive Intelligent Environments for Automatic Health Monitoring, focused on providing automatic location and activity monitoring in the home via low-cost sensors such as motion detectors and contact switches. He has worked as a research intern at Microsoft Research, the Xerox PARC, Northrop Grumman, and Intel Research Seattle. Also, he hosted a series on the History Channel entitled The Works, where he explained the hidden workings of everyday items.

In this guest lecture, Daniel H. Wilson is going to talk to us about his novel Robopocalypse. In the near future, a massively powerful artificial intelligence called Archos is created and cannot be contained. In those early months, only a handful of technological glitches are noticed by humans, as Archos starts to take over our cars, aircraft guidance systems, military robots, and computer networks – enslaving the entire global system that runs our lives. Then comes Zero Hour: The robot war suddenly ignites and as all the dazzling technology that runs our world turns against us, the human race is both decimated and for the first time in history, united. In the devastation that follows, humankind must destroy its own civilization to survive.

In the context of contemporary Indigenous Literature, Robopocalypse is revolutionary. It tackles issues of kinship, panhumanism, and indigenous futurism. The latter, employs tropes of science fiction to convey a decolonial narrative. Through techniques such as slipstream, worldbuilding, and First Contact scenarios, Robopocalypse constructs a speculative future that forces the reader to redefine the notion of humanity as such.

Everyone welcome!

Scheduled General Lectures News