You can graph human evolution, which is mostly a straight line, but we do get better and change over time, and you can graph technological evolution, which is a line that’s going straight up. They are going to intersect each other at some point, and that’s happening now. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
I wrote a query letter to an editor – a friend of a friend. The editor called me an idiot, told me never to contact an editor directly, and then recommended three literary agents he had worked with before. Laurie Fox was one of them, and I’ve never looked back. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
There are no movie references that I can think of in ‘Robopocalypse.’ However, there are tons of personal references. For example, the IP address that Lurker tracks actually goes back to the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, where I studied robotics. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
I don’t know how anybody can work at home. I know I can’t. It’s just… there’s too much to do at the house, and now, of course, I have a daughter that’s at home, and she’s always a draw. I can always drop what I’m doing and go play with her, and I do that all day. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
Robots are interesting because they exist as a real technology that you can really study – you can get a degree in robotics – and they also have all this pop-culture real estate that they take up in people’s minds. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
These days the technology can solve our problems and then some. Solutions may not only erase physical or mental deficits but leave patients better off than ‘able-bodied’ folks. The person who has a disability today may have a superability tomorrow. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
The poster boy for our superabled future is Oscar Pistorius, an increasingly famous South African sprinter who happens to have had both of his legs amputated below the knee. Using upside down question mark-shaped carbon fiber sprinting prosthetics, called Cheetah blades, Mr. Pistorius can challenge the fastest sprinters in the world. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
The goal for many amputees is no longer to reach a ‘natural’ level of ability but to exceed it, using whatever cutting-edge technology is available. As this new generation sees it, our tools are evolving faster than the human body, so why obey the limits of mere nature? Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
The dissemination of advanced implantable technology will likely be just as ruthlessly democratic as the ailments it is destined to treat. Meaning that, someday soon, we may have a new class of very smart, very fast people – yesterday’s disabled and elderly. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote
Sometimes a technology is so awe-inspiring that the imagination runs away with it – often far, far away from reality. Robots are like that. A lot of big and ultimately unfulfilled promises were made in robotics early on, based on preliminary successes. Daniel H. Wilson Read Quote