Overview

Digital Stimulation explores the subject of intimacy, including romantic and sexual intimacy, between human and nonhuman entities, particularly technological entities. As relationships between humans and machines become increasingly prevalent, it is important to address the potential for such relationships to reflect, to reinforce, or to reinvent existing hierarchies. The distinction between man and machine, like the distinction between man and beast, between man and brute, between man and nature, between man and woman, and so on, is an expression of the anthropocentrism and androcentrism permeating western ideas of self and other. Concerns about the representation (or misrepresentation) and treatment (or mistreatment) of machines are of consequence for other human and nonhuman others as well, and this book details many of the ways in which depictions of machines, especially robots, mirror ideas and attitudes about various human and nonhuman others. This book also addresses the ongoing development of machines designed explicitly for intimate engagement with humans, such as sex robots. As they become more and more lifelike, it becomes progressively more urgent to cultivate compassion toward such machines.

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Reviews

Mimi Marinucci’s book addresses an incredibly timely topic with nuance and compassion. She helps readers move beyond whatever fears they might have about new technologies such as robots and AI, and shows us how these technologies can be part of our intimate lives. And she gives us the context we need to make sense of the strange new world that is in fact already here. * Neil McArthur, University of Manitoba, Canada * Digital Stimulation adeptly reviews our current modes of interacting with robot others while calling for a more thoughtful approach to all our future relationships. * James M. Okapal, Missouri Western State University, USA *

Mimi Marinucci’s book addresses an incredibly timely topic with nuance and compassion. She helps readers move beyond whatever fears they might have about new technologies such as robots and AI, and shows us how these technologies can be part of our intimate lives. And she gives us the context we need to make sense of the strange new world that is in fact already here. * Neil McArthur, University of Manitoba, Canada *

Mimi Marinucci’s book addresses an incredibly timely topic with nuance and compassion. Digital Stimulation helps readers move beyond whatever fears they might have about new technologies such as robots and AI, and shows us how these technologies can be part of our intimate lives. And she gives us the context we need to make sense of the strange new world that is in fact already here. * Neil McArthur, University of Manitoba, Canada * Digital Stimulation adeptly reviews our current modes of interacting with robot others while calling for a more thoughtful approach to all our future relationships. * James M. Okapal, Missouri Western State University, USA *

Author Information

Mimi Marinucci is Professor of Philosophy and of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Eastern Washington University, USA. Marinucci is the author of Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection Between Queer and Feminist Theory (Bloomsbury, 2010)

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