Investigate how robotics have become part of our everyday lives —

Design is indispensable if robots are to become a visible reality and not remain hidden in washing machines, cars, and cash machines.

This volume clarifies where we already encounter intelligent machines and where we may find them in the near future: in industry, in the military and in everydays settings—nurseries, retirement homes, in our bodies and in the cloud; when shopping and having sex; in video games and, of course, in film, literature and art.

In a series of in-depth essays and interviews, experts such as the science-fiction author Bruce Sterling, novelist Douglas Coupland, architect Philip Beesley, and the design duo Dunne & Raby explore the question of how we deal with our environment becoming increasingly digital, smarter, and more autonomous. The texts highlight our often ambivalent relationship to new technologies and discuss the opportunities and challenges that are posed to us as individuals and as a society in this context. 

Hello, Robot. broadens the scope of the ethical and political questions which arise today in light of technological advances in robotics, while also probing the contradictions that are often found in the answers to these questions.

“Hello, Robot. argues that robots are much more than powerful tools, having preoccupied the human imagination for thousands of years in one form or another. As their presence becomes more commonplace, humans begin to soften and anthropomorphize robots.” —The Architects Newspaper

Edited by Mateo Kries and Amelia Klein

Designed by Chris Rehberger, Veit Grünert
Layout by an algorithm developed in collaboration with Double Standards, Berlin

Published by Vitra Design Museum, 2017

Flexicover, 328 pages, 250 color images, 7.5 × 10 inches

ISBN: 978-3-945852-11-8