Radical Robots: Can You Be Replaced?

School Library Journal

Gr 3-5-- Bright, full-color photos; blocky, fanciful paintings; an easy text; and plenty of brief sidebar essays describe what robots, and to a lesser extent computers, presently can and cannot do. After a nod to the mechanical creatures of stage, screen, and literature, Harrar reassuringly shows how inadequate robots actually are when it comes to dealing with our daily world of variables, coincidences, and constant small decisions. He finishes up with a look at some of the directions research into robotics and artificial intelligence is taking and a quick tour through Boston's computer museum. This colorful book will certainly attract casual browsers, and if Harrar skips blithely past the difficult political and economic issues of robot glorification, he writes in a vivid, engaging way that compensates for the speed with which he covers the subject. A good additional purchase, not quite as wide-ranging as Knight's Robotics: Past, Present & Future (Morrow, 1983), but more up-to-date. --John Peters, New York Public Library