Notes on The Mechanoid's Bloodline: Looking at Robots, Androids, and Cyborgs

Abstract

It is the Fourth of July, 1997. A six-wheeled robot similar in size and appearance to a microwave oven trundles out onto the surface of the planet Mars. This is a key moment in the Pathfinder Mission, NASA's latest expedition to the red planet. What resonates, however, is that this mechanized device patrolling the far frontier of contemporary technological innovation has been named Sojourner, after Sojourner Truth, a black woman, born a slave in Ulster County, New York in 1797, who became a nationally recognized activist and reformer.