Degrees of Freedom

ENDORSEMENTS

“Working from within the belly of the beast, Williams offers insights from the humanities and social sciences, especially critical social theory, to imagine an equitable robotic future. True to an engineering ethos of ’doing better,’ this book both explores the foundational aspects of power that invisibly shape robot design and suggests how to build robots better suited for advancing social justice.”
—Ericka Johnson, Professor of Gender and Society, Linköping University, Sweden

“Degrees of Freedom is a perfect example of how transgressing the boundaries of hegemonic computing epistemologies better informs our collective understanding of not only how societal oppressions are replicated or exacerbated by robotics but also why the eradication of these harms is necessary and possible for a more just society. It’s this transgression that makes this book a must-read for scholars, professionals, students, and activists whose work creates, examines, or uses robots.”
—Nicki Washington, Cue Family Professor of the Practice of Computer Science, Duke University