Book Review: Turned On
Katie 
Turned On is a book about Science, Sex and Robots. Yes, Sex Robots. This book piqued my interest when it mentioned Robots, and maybe a little because it mentioned Sex as well. It was a lot more indepth, technical and interesting than I was expecting. Like, I didn’t realize that Corn Flakes were created to be a part of a bland diet to try and reduce masturbation urges. Or that most sex dolls are made in the image of women and while there are some men ones, they are much harder to come by. And that sex toys are getting smarter and smarter and some even use AI to become who the user wants them to become. But there is also a risk with AI because some are programmed to reach their goal – and HOW they go about it is really cared about which can be dangerous. I’m also particularly intrigued by the “incel” community and there was some information on that in here as well and if a solution for their problem could be a sex robot?
And since I am now in grad school for Cyber Security, I couldn’t ignore the part where some of the sex toys were keeping data on the user – and it wasn’t stored anonymously so when it was ultimately hacked and obtained by someone who wasn’t supposed to have it, they had all sorts of interesting and NON ANONYMOUS data from the sex toys. Yikes!! I didn’t even think about that before then but I think that is the sort of “personal” data that users would really want to be kept secure and anonymous and encrypted!
I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated. This book was released December 18 2018 by Bloomsbury USA.
About the Book
The idea of the seductive sex robot is the stuff of myth, legend and science fiction. From the ancient Greeks to twenty-first century movies, robots in human form have captured our imagination, our hopes and our fears. But beyond the fantasies there are real and fundamental questions about our relationship with technology as it moves into the realm of robotics. Artificial intelligence raises very real concerns. Sexual activity is central to our very existence; it shapes how we think, how we act and how we live. With advances in technology come machines that may one day think independently. What will happen to us when we form close relationships with these intelligent systems?
Chapter by chapter, this book will build on the science and the philosophy surrounding our most intimate relationship with technology. The scene is set with the history of the artificial sexual companion, then goes on to explore the “modern” robot and the twentieth century sci-fi that promised us our own robot slaves. An explanation of artificial intelligence and the urge to create sentient machines delves into our own psychology: how does desire affect our own behavior, and can we become attached to an inanimate object? Can robots make society a better place? And what can go wrong?
Sex robots are here, and here to stay–and more are coming. This book explores how the emerging and future development of sexual companion robots might affect us, and our society. It explores the social changes arising from emerging technologies, and our relationships with the machines that may someday care for us and about us.
The Birth of Loud tells the story of Fender versus Les Paul, how they each got their starts and how they came to end up creating their now well known guitars. It was 42 chapters and a lot of drama and very interesting. I don’t know much about guitars so it was interesting to read about how they were creating them and what materials they were using and what kind of tones they were hoping to achieve out of them. It was also interesting to read that Gibson had denied the idea that was brought to them for one of the guitars! Also interesting was how Les Paul was give a Fender to try out – even though the two were kind of competitors and enemies.
U2 is rock-and-roll royalty. U2: The Definitive Biography is the first unauthorized biography of the band to document their career. The book contains previously unpublished photographs and interviews with the band’s friends and business associates. It also goes into the bands humanitarian work.
It’s a Question of Space is an astronaut, Clayton C. Anderson, who lived in space for 167 days answering questions sent to him via social media about what it’s like to be in space and be an astronaut. Growing up I always wanted to be an astronaut so I was drawn to this book to find out what it would really be like. There’s also a fun mention of Lance Bass in the book, so that is always a plus.
Mascot Nation focuses on the controversy over Native American Representation in Sports. To be honest I watch a decent amount of sports but have never really thought about how Native Americans are represented especially at the mascot level. I know that news picks up every now and then about wanting to change some of the mascots to something different, but change never really seems to happen. This book goes into more detail about that and how there are polls that seem to be skewed to say that Native Americans aren’t offended by it – and if they aren’t, why should anyone else be? But most of these polls taken can’t prove that only those voting were Native Americans.
I was really looking forward to reading How to Date Men When You Hate Men. Except that the book ended up being not at all what I was expecting and it ended up taking me forever to actually finish it. As someone who is using dating apps and is ‘over it’ and definitely in a state of ‘hating’ men… I thought I would be able to relate more to the book and was looking to laugh a little bit more with someone who is dealing with the same crap that I am. Except it doesn’t seem like the author is dealing with the same crap at all (yet all my friends using the apps seem to be) and she is actually going out with guys but then kind of seems to write off that it isn’t a date. *shrugs* The plus was in the end she didn’t reveal that she had found a guy that she was dating, that would have just been a stab in the heart if it was how it ended. There were a few things that hit home and made me laugh but for the most part I felt like this book missed the mark.
Girls Resist! is an activism handbook for girls who want to try and make some change in the world. One of the ways to fight back mentioned in the book was to see what kind of unconscious bias you have. I took the Career & Family test and was told “Your data suggests a moderate automatic association for Male with Career and Female with Family.” Some of the others I took did not give me the answers I “expected” to get. You can see your biases for yourself at implicit.harvard.edu!
Girl boner is geared towards ‘good girls’ seeking sexual empowerment. There are journal exercises throughout the book and stories from abuse victims as well as ways to self are and pointers on sex positions. It seems like a woman’s pleasure is always an after thought to the man’s, so this book helps educate the women and hopefully help make their sex lifes a little bit more pleasurable.
Fantastic Failures is all about people who have changed the world – but not without falling down first. Some of the names that you will probably recognize that are included in this book include – Harry Potter author JK Rowling, Media superstar Oprah, movie director Steven Speilberg, NASA brain Katherine Johnson… The moral of the story is, be persistent and keep trying. Fall down 7 times, stand up 8. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Just think of all the things we would not have if the people in this book gave up after their first attempt didn’t go as they had planned for it to!
We Are The Nerds tells the story of the birth and tumultuous life of REDDIT, the Internet’s culture laboratory. It may be a surprise to many, but I do not spend much time on reddit at all. I am aware of what it is and I know a ton of people who spend hours there checking everything out but for whatever reason it never really clicked as a place for me to check out. However, I am a nerd and I am all about the internet and making webpages and apps and the like so getting to read a bit about how everything behind the scenes went down before the site was created and then trying to figure out how to balance its popularity as well as know what to censor and what not to censor was really interesting to me. A lot of fun stories from behind the scenes, some sad ones as well. I learned a lot, even if it did seem to take me forever and a day to actually end up finishing the book. (Where has all my free time gone!? No wonder why I have no time for reddit…)