Anthropomorphic machines: alien sensation and experience in nonhumans created to be like us

© 2018 Dr. Tessa Gwendoline LeachThis thesis is positioned at the intersection between technology studies and the nonhuman turn in the humanities. It argues that typical approaches to the study of technology omit any consideration of the alien nature of nonhuman sensation and experience. The discussion of metaphysical theory aimed at redressing this omission is grounded in this thesis in the study of specific case studies of anthropomorphic machines, objects which are typically surrounded by human-centric rhetoric. There are four main case studies presented. The first, the Microsoft Kinect for Xbox One, is a sensor designed for use in videogames. The second is the “robot tortoises” (Machina speculatrix) designed by William Grey Walter in the 1940s and 50s. The third is the language-using artificial intelligence program SHRDLU developed by Terry Winograd between 1968 and 1972. The fourth is the concept of the gynoid (female humanoid robot) and particularly the gynoid sexbot. Each of these case studies has previously been analysed in Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies or Engineering, and this thesis builds on this past work by giving primacy and due consideration to the alien in these anthropomorphic technologies. The thesis aims to decentre the anthropomorphic qualities of machines that are often foregrounded in both engineering and critical texts. This is done both by emphasising the alien nature of nonhuman sensation and experience, and through anthrodecentric theory and language. An emphasis on maintaining a suitable posthuman tone is, it is argued, essential to this “alien phenomenology”. This is not a frivolous exercise; alien phenomenological work (or the study of the way nonhumans sense and experience their worlds) helps to diffuse the persuasive influence of anthropomorphism as it is applied to technological artefacts, and to develop a more critical study of these objects and contextualise human perspectives of them. Numerous metaphysical and critical theories of technology are discussed. The most attention is given to object-oriented ontology (OOO), particularly that put forward by Graham Harman. Other approaches used include Actor-Network Theory (ANT), postphenomenology, biosemiotics and panpsychism. Full acceptance of the ontological commitments of any particular theory is avoided, and instead they are both deployed and critiqued as lenses through which to perform the work of alien phenomenology