A. Robots have been the stuff of science fiction for so long that it is surprisingly hard to see them as the stuff of management fact. A Czech playw, Karel Capek, gave them their name in 1920 (from the Slavonic word for "work".. An American writer, Isaac Asimov, confronted them with their most memorable dilemmas. Hollywood turned them into superheroes and super villains. When some film critics drew up lists of Hollywood's 50 greatest good guys and 50 greatest baddies, the only character to appear on both lists was a robot, the Terminator. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/C. America's armed forces have blazed a trail here. They now have no fewer than 12,000 robots serving in their ranks. Peter Singer, of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank ( 智囊团., says mankind' s 5,000-year monopoly on the fighting of war is breaking down. Recent additions to the battlefield include tiny "insects" that perform reconnaissance (侦查 . missions and giant "dogs" to terrify enemies. The Pentagon is also working on the EATR, a robot that fuels itself by eating whatever biomass ( 生物量 . it finds around it. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/D. But the civilian world cannot be far behind. Who better to clean sewers or suck up nuclear waste than these remarkable machines? The Japanese have made surprisingly little use of robots to clear up after the recent earthquake, given their world leadership in this area. They say that they had the wrong sort of robots in the wrong places. But they have issued a global call for robotic assistance and are likely to put more robots to work shortly. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/E. As robots advance into the service industries they are starting to look less like machines and more like living creatures. The Paro (made by/LIST, a Japanese research agency. is shaped like a baby seal and responds to attention. Honda's robot, ASIMO, is humanoid and can walk, talk and respond to commands. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/F. Until now executives have largely ignored robots, regarding them as an engineering rather than a management problem. This cannot go on: robots are becoming too powerful and ubiquitous (无处不在的.. Companies may need to rethink their strategies as they gain access to these new sorts of workers. Do they really need to outsource production to China, for example, when they have clever machines that work ceaselessly without pay? They certainly need to rethink their human-resources policies--starting by questioning whether they should have departments devoted to purely human resources. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/G. The first issue is how to manage the robots themselves. Asimov laid down the basic rule in 1942: no robot should harm a human. This rule has been reinforced by recent technological improvements: robots are now much more sensitive to their surroundings and can be instructed to avoid hitting people. But the Pentagon's plans make all this a bit more complicated: many of its robots will be, in essence, killing machines. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/H. A second question is how to manage the homo side of homo-robo relations. Workers have always worded that new technologies will take away their livelihoods, ever since the original Luddites' fears about mechanised looms. That worry takes on a particularly intense form when the machines come with a human face: Capek's play that gave robots their name depicted a world in which they initially brought lots of benefits but eventually led to mass unemployment and discontent. Now, the arrival of increasingly humanoid automatons in workplaces, in an era of high unemployment, is bound to provoke a reaction. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/I. So, companies will need to work hard to persuade workers that robots are productivity-enhancers, not just job-eating aliens. They need to show employees that the robot sitting alongside them can be more of a helpmate than a threat. Audi has been particularly successful in introducing industrial robots because the car maker asked workers to identify areas where robots could improve performance and then gave those workers jobs overseeing the robots. Employers also need to explain that robots can help preserve manufacturing jobs in the rich world: one reason why Germany has lost fewer such jobs than Britain is that it has five times as many robots for every 10,000 workers. 
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/J. These two principles---don't let robots hurt or fen people--are relatively simple. Robot scientists are tackling more complicated problems as robots become more sophisticated. They are keen to avoid hierarchies (层级. among rescue-robots (because the loss of the leader would render the rest redundant.. So they are using game theory to make sure the robots can communicate with each other in egalitarian (平等. ways. They are keen to avoid duplication between robots and their human handlers. So they are producing more complicated mathematical formulae in order that robots can constantly adjust themselves to human intentions. This suggests that the world could be on the verge of a great management revolution: making robots behave like humans rather than the 20th century's preferred option, making humans behave like robots. 

style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/B． Success breeds imitators. Amazon is about to be attacked by a squadron of would-be Kindle killers being brought to market by some of the biggest names in consumer electronics and publishing. To complicate the increasingly competitive landscape even further, Apple and, according to rumor, Microsoft are working on tablet computers that could prove to be handy e-readers but with more functions and features, such as video display capability and full web browsers. "2009 is a breakout year fore-readers," says Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst with Forrester Research."But we're still in the early stages."
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/C． The early stages have lasted a longtime. E-readers have been around for more than a decade, but the devices weren't popular due to high cost, proprietary (专利的) display formats and the reluctance of book publishers to sell digital versions of their best-selling titles. Now, just as digital music was driven into the mainstream by Apple's iPod and iTunes, Amazon's Kindle andonline bookstore, which sells more than 350,000 titles, are proving there's amass market for e-books. Total industry revenue from digital-book downloads has risen 149% this year, according to the Association of American Publishers,while e-reader sales are expected to reach 3 million by Dec.31, according to For rester Research. Almost a million of the devices could be sold during the upcoming holiday season alone. In 2010, sales are projected to double, to 6 million.That kind of growth is hard to come by in the recession-wracked technology industry, and a crowd is starting to gather. Around the world, at least 17 e-readers are in development or already on the market.
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/D． Among the better-known entrants is Asustek -- the Taiwanese company of China practically invented the netbook category with its ASUS Eee-PC, and it is working on a product called the Eee-reader that it hopes to have on the market in time for Christmas. South Korea's two powerhouse consumer-electronics companies, Samsung and LG Electronics, are wading in too. Samsung earlier this year introduced a reader called the Papyrus in South Korea; reports circulating in the technology blogosphere say LG is developing a prototype with a large,11.5- inch (diagonal） flexible screen. Meanwhile, Japan's Fujitsu has released the world's first dedicated e-reader with a colour  screen, although so far the device is only available in Japan.
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/E． It isn't just tech companies that are joining the fray. Bricks-and-mortar bookseller Barnes & Noble, which in the US offers access to 750,000 e-books on its website, is rumored to be pondering the development of its own e-reader to rival the Kindle. (The retailer already has a partnership to sell e-readers made by IREX, a spin-off of Holland's Royal Philips Electronics.)
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/Major newspaper and magazine publishers,which are suffering mightily from the loss of subscribers and advertisers to the recession and the Internet, are also getting involved. News Corp. chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Wall Street Journal, is reportedly considering a deal with Japanese consumer-electronics giant Sony, which in 2004 introduced the first commercially viable e-reader, to use a black-and-white display technology called electronic ink (also used by the Kindle. Sony is rolling out a new family of e-readers, including a pocket- size version and one with a large screen that's geared toward newspapers and magazines.
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/F． One reason e-readers are getting traction is that competition is driving down prices. Amazon has cut the price of the Kindle by $100 over the past six months, to $259. As e-readers proliferate(激增) and price disparities narrow, manufacturers are trying to differentiate their products by adding features such as MP3 players and touch screens. The eSlick by Foxit,based in Fremont, Calif., allows users to listen to songs while reading .Asustek recently unveiled a prototype e-reader with two screens, which would more closely duplicate the traditional reading experience, although the devicethat the company expects to release later this year will have a single screen.
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/G． At the same time, new display technologies are emerging that promise to improve battery life and make devices more portable and easier to read. UK-based Plastic Logic hopes to introduce nextyear the first e-reader with a plastic screen that will reduce glare and be less prone to cracking when dropped by ham-fisted owners. Electronic-ink technology is set to move from black and white to colour by the end of 2010.Even video is on the horizon. "We'll see a range of models start to appear over the first half of 2010 offering a range of different reading and productivity experiences," says Neil Jones, CEO of UK-based In teread, which in May launched
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/a $249 e-reader called the COOL-ER.
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/H. Newcomers will have a hard time breaking Amazon's chokehold in the US, where the company controls 60% of the e-reader market, according to Forrester Research. But the edge Amazon gained when it launchedthe Kindle could be blunted by evolving technology and changing consumer needs.Currently, more people read e-books on their smart phones than they do on dedicated devices like e-readers.
style=color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Microsoft YaHei"; white-space: normal; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);/I. And there's the looming threat posed by next-generation tablet computers. Apple, the king of cool handheld devices, is rumored to be readying a tablet computer with all the functions of a laptop aswell as iPhone-like touch capabilities for release early next year. Microsoft has been secretive about its plans for a tablet, but a video making the rounds of the blogosphere shows a dual-LCD-screen prototype that closes like a book."E-readers are a transitional technology," says Rotman Epps of Forrester Research. It means that just as the e-reader is taking off, it may be becoming obsolete.