Sammendrag
Abstract: Japanese society is a conundrum; it is both rapidly changing, especially in regards to technology and the new role of the individual. At the same time, it is also keeping up continuity and traditions, firmly grounded in its deep cultural-history (Benedict, 1967; Lu, 1997). In this paper, the authors study one of Japan’s most recognizable objects, both in industry and in fictional-culture: namely the Japanese robot. This article questions whether robots are more accepted in Japan because Japanese people are more used to thinking about entities similar to robots. The authors ask why robots seem to be more popular in Japan than in Western countries, and connects this to historical robot entities, and also contemporary culture, fusing old and new Japan’s way of thinking of “otherness”. A society “hooked” on technology project it through its creations (Ogasawara, 1998; Kvaal, 2009; Robertson, 2010), and this paper investigates the “Japaneseness” of these beings. The research is based on Studies of Science, Technology and Society (Callon, 1986; Law, 1992; Latour, 1996), with a focus on Actor-Network Theory. The paper investigates the robots as Boundary Objects (Star, 1989; Wenger, 2000; Lagesen, 2010) seeing how different actors interpret them, but also how modern portrayal is deeply rooted in the cultural-history of Japan.
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