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How the IBM PC Won, Then Lost, the Personal Computer Market

Cars That Think

On 12 August 1981, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in midtown Manhattan, IBM unveiled the company's entrant into the nascent personal computer market: the IBM PC. The personal computer vastly expanded the number of people and organizations that used computers. With that, the preeminent U.S. Press coverage of the announcement was lukewarm.

Personal 145
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Your Life As A Digital Ghost

Cars That Think

Wong describes the new digital afterlife industry in a chapter of her new book from MIT Press, We the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age. So your book takes on a much broader topic, the datafication of our daily lives and the human rights implications of that phenomenon. Wong: Thanks for having me.

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The Heart and the Chip: What Could Go Wrong?

Cars That Think

Legendary MIT roboticist Daniela Rus has published a new book called The Heart and the Chip: Our Bright Future with Robots. There is a robotics revolution underway,” Rus says in the book’s introduction, “one that is already causing massive changes in our society and in our lives.”

MIT 98
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GM Webchat with Chris Borroni-Bird on Reinventing the Automobile, Friday 2pm EDT

Green Car Congress

EDT, with Christopher Borroni-Bird, GM’s Director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts and co-author of the book Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21 st Century.

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Celebrating the Life of Columbia Professor Stephen Unger

Cars That Think

in EE from MIT in 1953 and 1957, respectively. He published three books on the topic, including Controlling Technology: Ethics and the Responsible Engineer. Unger’s personal blog, “ Ends and Means ,” addressed ethical questions surrounding education, electronic voting, robotics, and other topics.

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The Man Who Coined The Word "Robot" Defends Himself

Cars That Think

What is or is not called a robot is an ongoing debate that most roboticists seem to try to avoid, but personally, I appreciate the idea that very broadly, a robot is something that seems alive but isn’t—something with independent embodied intelligence. Published by The MIT Press. Copyright © 2024 MIT. Excerpted from R.U.R.

MIT 138
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Just Calm Down About GPT-4 Already

Cars That Think

Best known as a robotics researcher, academic, and entrepreneur, Brooks is also an authority on AI: he directed the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT until 2007, and held faculty positions at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford before that. Or, how far can a person throw a Frisbee? Rodney Brooks, Robust.AI

Personal 145