Episode · Stuff You Should Know · 2023-03-25
Books mentioned on Selects: Is The Uncanny Valley Real?
In 1970, roboticist Masahiro Mori wrote an essay that said the closer robots come to lifelike, the more they unsettle humans. His theory became the Uncanny Valley, and science has been evaluating it – and what makes something creepy - in recent years.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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David Copperfield
Charles Dickens’s enduring masterpiece, David Copperfield, is a sweeping Victorian bildungsroman that follows the tumultuous life, moral maturation, and professional struggles of its eponymous hero from childhood to adulthood.
Discussed“and we have Charles Dickens to thank for this evidently because he gets credit for using the creeps and David Copperfield in 1849 people had had this feeling before”
Where to get it
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Psycho
Discussed“but Norman Bates was into Taxidermy for a reason in Psycho right it was unsettling”
Where to get it
