Avatar. The Avengers. Iron Man 3. Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The Dark Knight Rises.
These are five of the top ten all-time highest grossing movies. Their (arguable) inclusion in the Science Fiction canon begs a question of the genre: is it just the spectacle that we shell out to witness, or is there some more primitive itch that these kinds of events scratch?
This blog is dedicated to figuring out how it is that Science Fiction addresses the problem of defining "human."
Asimov’s robots seem to have genuine feeling. We don’t see it from their point of view, but the narrator lets us in to see a little bit of Robbie’s emotions: Unease and disconsolation, for example. There’s a lot of sentiment, and based on his emotional behavior, you get the feeling that Robbie is acting as a stand-in for the family dog or another younger sibling. He’s still a precise and efficient robot, though; during hide and seek, he consciously maintains a distinctly efficient and tactical stance, placing himself between Gloria and the tree.
You can see Mrs. Weston’s discomfort towards Robbie mirroring a similar contemporary argument against technology. It’s a “kids these days” kind of argument, where “TV will rot their brains” and “video games will stunt their sociability”. This “luddism” of older generations ignores or overlooks the very real significance of Gloria’s relationship with Robbie. There’s certainly nothing “unnatural” about their relationship, except that it’s new, unfamiliar, and not easily understood, maybe similar to how grandparents see video games.
It’s interesting that the prototype talking robot malfunctions after realizing he’s one of a group. Perhaps this hints at why governments banned the new talking models later. Would that awareness and ability to communicate threaten to spark a revolution like we saw in Rossum’s? Or maybe it’s a general collective anxiety and unease, like Mrs. Weston had, about this new and unfamiliar technology?
The relationship between Robbie and Gloria is an adorable one. It’s a nice contrast from RUR where robots are mostly made for work. Although he does not talk, I found it very easy to sympathize with Robbie. He felt just as “human” as anyone else in the story. I agreed with Grace in thinking that Robbie might stunt Gloria socially although I think she went about it the wrong way. In the end I was wrong because she appears to be fine with him leaving in the epilogue. , For the most part, this story is a huge contrast from RUR. Instead of seeing robots solely focused on labor, we see them used in other practical ways. Even so, it was a bit unnerving seeing George Weston disregard any possibility of Robbie malfunctioning. This was also an issue in RUR and we all saw how that turned out. Perhaps, this might be for shadowing towards a similar situation. Struthers hints at the inevitability of using robots for labor and again, Weston ignores that. It seems as though he is really invested in what U.S. Robots is doing but does not want to come to terms with robots becoming anything short of wholesome. The epilogue at the end shows something greater in store for the robots and humanity as well. Did anything significant happen on Mercury or did everything go just as planned? I have not read all of I, Robot but, with how much robots may be used by 2015, I can only imagine that something might happen in the same way as HAL 9000.
The cute bit of play between Gloria and Robbie at the beginning was of interested to me. First and foremost, we have the now uncommon (at least in most genre fiction) 3rd person omniscient narration- it's not necessarily the narrator telling us everything just to emphasize that s/he knows things, but rather hops between the two characters' thoughts- first what Gloria hears, thinks, and feels, but then, too, we get Robbie's thoughts. My favorite line from early on: "The logic was irrefutable... he was a silver 'coaster." There are then suggestions following that, indicating that the robot is happy— such as when he hears the recounting of Cinderella— and sad – when he is told to leave, he takes a “disconsolate step,” which is not just robotic movement, but motion with the “e” on the front: emotion. Where humanity now communicates with e-mail, read e-books, and so on, e-motion is what the robot has. Okay, so maybe that last bit was a little closer to gibberish than I’d like. However, more than that, I found Robbie's desire to hear stories to be most significant. Here we have a robot who, at least on some level, can empathize and play with this child in a way that is not purely mechanical. He has ideas and thoughts that we get through the narration, though not in the most direct manner. I found myself agreeing with Mr. Weston, that Robbie "isn't a terrible machine." He is not even looked at from a utilitarian perspective of being useful, but rather seen as a monster in a sort of unfair racist sense- a tone that, once set, seems to affect and carry over the entire story in terms of how Mrs. Weston and others seen him.
Adorably written. The robot here is not made as an adversary to humans, or a competing factor. But as a companion. This is nice. It's a fresh look and good propaganda for robots for nuclear families. It's like "hey, embrace technology. No matter you're opinion, it is whats best". Cool, I'm with you Asimov. Making Robbie able to play with Gloria gave him/it some human qualities which really would make people say what separates humans from machines right? Participating in entertainment. Gloria gave Robbie emotions too, which even if were programmed by computers and not controlled by hormones and nerves, still makes it a very human quality. I hope one day my kids can have a Robbie to play with.
I loved how this story was so whimsical and quaint, which is something I don’t usually expect from science fiction literature. I found myself siding with Mr. Weston quite frequently, while it was difficult for me to understand why Mrs. Weston was so against Robbie. I thought it was interesting to make the connection between Robbie and RUR; where several characters expressed the opinion that the robots have no soul, and therefore cannot be considered human. At one point Mrs. Weston brings up her inability to understand Gloria’s feelings towards the robot, and viewed them as being unacceptable and intolerable, for this exact reason. In comparison to Radius, I felt that Robbie had much more of a “soul” because of the humane way that he acted towards Gloria. In this case, humane is being defined by the capacity to feel and convey emotion. Robbie becoming upset when Gloria threatened not to tell him any more stories along with his admiration for the story of Cinderella in particular, makes the reader feel sympathetic towards him when Gloria is unable to finish her retelling. The plot of this story takes a complete 180 from the traditional ‘robot turning against its’ creator’ theme and I really enjoyed that.
I really enjoyed reading this. It was so cute and fun to read. While I was reading this, I was hoping the whole time that Gloria would get Robbie back. No little child likes losing their best friend, even if it is a robot. I really liked how Asimov gave Robbie some human qualities that made him get attached and be protective of Gloria which was a good thing at the end when he saved her life. I was so glad that her father arranged for Robbie to be in the factory so Gloria could get Robbie back even though the mother didn’t want her to have it back. Like Becca said, “The plot of this story takes a complete 180 from the traditional ‘robot turning against its’ creator’ theme”, which I really enjoyed as well. It would be cool in the future for my children to have a robot like Robbie to play with and to care for them just like Robbie did with Gloria.
Reading “Robbie” was a lot of fun as the story was so cute that it was difficult to put down. This is an interesting take on the relationship between robots and humans that I don’t think is very often displayed. I think it was smart to use the character of a young innocent child to really see the robot as a true friend, like innocent Helena from RUR seeing them as having a soul. The matter of having a soul is actually brought up again here by Mrs. Weston, confidently mentioning that they don’t have one in response to her husband. To then see Robbie save Gloria though makes me beg to differ. I of course at that moment had a nice little “aww” moment and felt better that they were reunited. I thought this story was a great way to see robots as more than this creation that could be so life changing that it will probably be horrible and come back to bite us later. These robots were actually just useful and friendly, perhaps an alternative and more optimistic idea of the future of robots. I am not sure when this was written, but I was amazed that someone imagined 1998 to be a year with robots in the home. I would also like to now about the text at the very end mentioning the ban on robots between 2005 and 2007 that was mentioned. Why that would be so and why then lift the ban in 2007? And what year is this conversation happening that they are now looking back at these events?
Kyle McKenna I-Robot Robbie So through the first chunk of I-Robot I’m getting worried that again I’m reading this at face value and not pulling the deeper meaning behind the text. Obviously this novel has been spread into a much larger universe when it was adapted to the relatively recent film I-Robot starring Will Smith. In the film I can directly see a correlation to the question of what it actually means to be human and how an ultimate end game of total protection for humans through the usage of A.I. can turn ugly...blah blah so on and so forth. But thus far Robbie’s story just doesn’t strike me as anything more than a fantastical story of a poor little girl and an awfully annoyed mother who can’t seem to grasp the concept of friendship with something other than a human. Again we see the aspect of the designed human (robot) being faster, stronger in almost every way better than a human as Robbie dives selflessly after Gloria saving her life from what most certainly would have been a gruesome death. Inevitably also bringing us to the same point as do we consider these things human because they have the capacity to care for another being even though they are not made up of the same things as we are. But this also feels like a bit of a stretch compared to say Frankenstein or even R.U.R. I will say however I really enjoyed this over all the other things we have read this semester. It felt like a fun relaxed reading. I wasn’t forced to muscle through huge chunks of dialogue and I was able to get to the point of satisfaction with everything relatively quickly. Overall I-Robot seems like a fun read but doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the table we haven’t seen before in this class.
When I first started reading “Robbie” I thought it was a little weird because of how you’re just thrown into the story it took a little bit to figure out what was going on. However over all I thought it was a really cute story. I think because the little girl grew up with the robot she was originally unbiased to what a robot was supposed to be. So it would seem inevitable that she would view the robot like a person like her father compared it to how a pet can feel like a family member. Where her mother on the other hand was very heavy influenced by the people around her, causing her to worry and think that a robot is no good to have around. It’s interesting to me how people are so easily influenced by thing around them whether you’re the little girl being influenced by a robot always being around so it seems normal as opposed to the mother thinking about as just machines because of how she was raised.
What makes “Robbie” so different for the other short stories in I, Robot is that it deals most with human reactions to the robots rather than more science-y, researcher reactions to the robots. On one hand, you have Gloria, who is much like Helena Glory (Dude, their names are similar. As are their reaction to the robots, especially their personal favorites) in R.U.R., who loves her robot like it’s a pet and a friend. One the other, you have her mother, who is much more like Emma and dislikes these metal humanoids. Actually, both characters compare the robots as being less than dogs. Let’s talk about that. Both characters are arguing that robots aren’t natural creatures, they weren’t made by any God, but by man, and shouldn’t be around people as much as they are. They aren’t for companionship, they’re for drudgery. Emma notes in R.U.R. that a dog won’t even go near a dog because it is not natural and not to be trusted (I would hazard a guess that she makes this comparison because, generally, you shouldn’t trust someone your dog doesn’t like). Mrs. Weston’s comment is a lot weirder than that. It’s only in response to her husband that she makes this robot < dog comparison. She’s not really rational about the whole thing, is she? She’s more worried about what the town thinks about her letting her child play with a robot than the safety of her child.
Asimov being one of my favorite writers, he did not fail to impress me with his ability to reach out to an audience that surpasses just sc-fi fans. I loved the relationship he created between Robbie and Gloria, building a bridge between human and robot. Asimov immediately allows a connection with the reader and Robbie, illuminating how kind and sentimental he can be. But he still provides the stark contrast and prominent reminders that Robbie is in fact pieces of metal, constructed solely for the purpose of doing what used to be a human’s job. I liked the point that Justin brought up about the talking robot trying to process the concept of him being a part of a group. That enticed me as well because it got me thinking that a major part of ‘being human’ is the feeling and comfort of people a part of a community. Asimov draws a striking line here when the robot is unable to process this information. And then goes on to write that these talking models were discontinued anyways. In response to Justin’s question, I would argue that yes this ability to communicate and awareness of other like-beings could very well spark a revolution. Humans have an incredible ability to network and expand their ideas by communicating with one another through a community. I believe that that same process could be applied to a super-smart thinking machine. Especially if it’s designed to solve problems and act quickly –such as Robbie when he saved Gloria.
Asimov’s robots seem to have genuine feeling. We don’t see it from their point of view, but the narrator lets us in to see a little bit of Robbie’s emotions: Unease and disconsolation, for example. There’s a lot of sentiment, and based on his emotional behavior, you get the feeling that Robbie is acting as a stand-in for the family dog or another younger sibling. He’s still a precise and efficient robot, though; during hide and seek, he consciously maintains a distinctly efficient and tactical stance, placing himself between Gloria and the tree.
ReplyDeleteYou can see Mrs. Weston’s discomfort towards Robbie mirroring a similar contemporary argument against technology. It’s a “kids these days” kind of argument, where “TV will rot their brains” and “video games will stunt their sociability”. This “luddism” of older generations ignores or overlooks the very real significance of Gloria’s relationship with Robbie. There’s certainly nothing “unnatural” about their relationship, except that it’s new, unfamiliar, and not easily understood, maybe similar to how grandparents see video games.
It’s interesting that the prototype talking robot malfunctions after realizing he’s one of a group. Perhaps this hints at why governments banned the new talking models later. Would that awareness and ability to communicate threaten to spark a revolution like we saw in Rossum’s? Or maybe it’s a general collective anxiety and unease, like Mrs. Weston had, about this new and unfamiliar technology?
Edit: ...an UNFOUNDED collective anxiety and unease, because of the Three Laws in play...
DeleteThe relationship between Robbie and Gloria is an adorable one. It’s a nice contrast from RUR where robots are mostly made for work. Although he does not talk, I found it very easy to sympathize with Robbie. He felt just as “human” as anyone else in the story. I agreed with Grace in thinking that Robbie might stunt Gloria socially although I think she went about it the wrong way. In the end I was wrong because she appears to be fine with him leaving in the epilogue. ,
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, this story is a huge contrast from RUR. Instead of seeing robots solely focused on labor, we see them used in other practical ways. Even so, it was a bit unnerving seeing George Weston disregard any possibility of Robbie malfunctioning. This was also an issue in RUR and we all saw how that turned out. Perhaps, this might be for shadowing towards a similar situation. Struthers hints at the inevitability of using robots for labor and again, Weston ignores that. It seems as though he is really invested in what U.S. Robots is doing but does not want to come to terms with robots becoming anything short of wholesome.
The epilogue at the end shows something greater in store for the robots and humanity as well. Did anything significant happen on Mercury or did everything go just as planned? I have not read all of I, Robot but, with how much robots may be used by 2015, I can only imagine that something might happen in the same way as HAL 9000.
The cute bit of play between Gloria and Robbie at the beginning was of interested to me. First and foremost, we have the now uncommon (at least in most genre fiction) 3rd person omniscient narration- it's not necessarily the narrator telling us everything just to emphasize that s/he knows things, but rather hops between the two characters' thoughts- first what Gloria hears, thinks, and feels, but then, too, we get Robbie's thoughts. My favorite line from early on: "The logic was irrefutable... he was a silver 'coaster." There are then suggestions following that, indicating that the robot is happy— such as when he hears the recounting of Cinderella— and sad – when he is told to leave, he takes a “disconsolate step,” which is not just robotic movement, but motion with the “e” on the front: emotion. Where humanity now communicates with e-mail, read e-books, and so on, e-motion is what the robot has.
ReplyDeleteOkay, so maybe that last bit was a little closer to gibberish than I’d like.
However, more than that, I found Robbie's desire to hear stories to be most significant. Here we have a robot who, at least on some level, can empathize and play with this child in a way that is not purely mechanical. He has ideas and thoughts that we get through the narration, though not in the most direct manner. I found myself agreeing with Mr. Weston, that Robbie "isn't a terrible machine." He is not even looked at from a utilitarian perspective of being useful, but rather seen as a monster in a sort of unfair racist sense- a tone that, once set, seems to affect and carry over the entire story in terms of how Mrs. Weston and others seen him.
Adorably written.
ReplyDeleteThe robot here is not made as an adversary to humans, or a competing factor. But as a companion. This is nice. It's a fresh look and good propaganda for robots for nuclear families. It's like "hey, embrace technology. No matter you're opinion, it is whats best". Cool, I'm with you Asimov. Making Robbie able to play with Gloria gave him/it some human qualities which really would make people say what separates humans from machines right? Participating in entertainment. Gloria gave Robbie emotions too, which even if were programmed by computers and not controlled by hormones and nerves, still makes it a very human quality. I hope one day my kids can have a Robbie to play with.
I loved how this story was so whimsical and quaint, which is something I don’t usually expect from science fiction literature. I found myself siding with Mr. Weston quite frequently, while it was difficult for me to understand why Mrs. Weston was so against Robbie. I thought it was interesting to make the connection between Robbie and RUR; where several characters expressed the opinion that the robots have no soul, and therefore cannot be considered human. At one point Mrs. Weston brings up her inability to understand Gloria’s feelings towards the robot, and viewed them as being unacceptable and intolerable, for this exact reason. In comparison to Radius, I felt that Robbie had much more of a “soul” because of the humane way that he acted towards Gloria. In this case, humane is being defined by the capacity to feel and convey emotion. Robbie becoming upset when Gloria threatened not to tell him any more stories along with his admiration for the story of Cinderella in particular, makes the reader feel sympathetic towards him when Gloria is unable to finish her retelling. The plot of this story takes a complete 180 from the traditional ‘robot turning against its’ creator’ theme and I really enjoyed that.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this. It was so cute and fun to read. While I was reading this, I was hoping the whole time that Gloria would get Robbie back. No little child likes losing their best friend, even if it is a robot. I really liked how Asimov gave Robbie some human qualities that made him get attached and be protective of Gloria which was a good thing at the end when he saved her life. I was so glad that her father arranged for Robbie to be in the factory so Gloria could get Robbie back even though the mother didn’t want her to have it back. Like Becca said, “The plot of this story takes a complete 180 from the traditional ‘robot turning against its’ creator’ theme”, which I really enjoyed as well. It would be cool in the future for my children to have a robot like Robbie to play with and to care for them just like Robbie did with Gloria.
ReplyDeleteReading “Robbie” was a lot of fun as the story was so cute that it was difficult to put down. This is an interesting take on the relationship between robots and humans that I don’t think is very often displayed. I think it was smart to use the character of a young innocent child to really see the robot as a true friend, like innocent Helena from RUR seeing them as having a soul. The matter of having a soul is actually brought up again here by Mrs. Weston, confidently mentioning that they don’t have one in response to her husband. To then see Robbie save Gloria though makes me beg to differ. I of course at that moment had a nice little “aww” moment and felt better that they were reunited. I thought this story was a great way to see robots as more than this creation that could be so life changing that it will probably be horrible and come back to bite us later. These robots were actually just useful and friendly, perhaps an alternative and more optimistic idea of the future of robots. I am not sure when this was written, but I was amazed that someone imagined 1998 to be a year with robots in the home. I would also like to now about the text at the very end mentioning the ban on robots between 2005 and 2007 that was mentioned. Why that would be so and why then lift the ban in 2007? And what year is this conversation happening that they are now looking back at these events?
ReplyDeleteKyle McKenna
ReplyDeleteI-Robot Robbie
So through the first chunk of I-Robot I’m getting worried that again I’m reading this at face value and not pulling the deeper meaning behind the text. Obviously this novel has been spread into a much larger universe when it was adapted to the relatively recent film I-Robot starring Will Smith. In the film I can directly see a correlation to the question of what it actually means to be human and how an ultimate end game of total protection for humans through the usage of A.I. can turn ugly...blah blah so on and so forth. But thus far Robbie’s story just doesn’t strike me as anything more than a fantastical story of a poor little girl and an awfully annoyed mother who can’t seem to grasp the concept of friendship with something other than a human.
Again we see the aspect of the designed human (robot) being faster, stronger in almost every way better than a human as Robbie dives selflessly after Gloria saving her life from what most certainly would have been a gruesome death. Inevitably also bringing us to the same point as do we consider these things human because they have the capacity to care for another being even though they are not made up of the same things as we are. But this also feels like a bit of a stretch compared to say Frankenstein or even R.U.R. I will say however I really enjoyed this over all the other things we have read this semester. It felt like a fun relaxed reading. I wasn’t forced to muscle through huge chunks of dialogue and I was able to get to the point of satisfaction with everything relatively quickly. Overall I-Robot seems like a fun read but doesn’t seem to bring anything new to the table we haven’t seen before in this class.
When I first started reading “Robbie” I thought it was a little weird because of how you’re just thrown into the story it took a little bit to figure out what was going on. However over all I thought it was a really cute story. I think because the little girl grew up with the robot she was originally unbiased to what a robot was supposed to be. So it would seem inevitable that she would view the robot like a person like her father compared it to how a pet can feel like a family member. Where her mother on the other hand was very heavy influenced by the people around her, causing her to worry and think that a robot is no good to have around. It’s interesting to me how people are so easily influenced by thing around them whether you’re the little girl being influenced by a robot always being around so it seems normal as opposed to the mother thinking about as just machines because of how she was raised.
ReplyDeleteFrom Em:
ReplyDeleteWhat makes “Robbie” so different for the other short stories in I, Robot is that it deals most with human reactions to the robots rather than more science-y, researcher reactions to the robots.
On one hand, you have Gloria, who is much like Helena Glory (Dude, their names are similar. As are their reaction to the robots, especially their personal favorites) in R.U.R., who loves her robot like it’s a pet and a friend. One the other, you have her mother, who is much more like Emma and dislikes these metal humanoids. Actually, both characters compare the robots as being less than dogs.
Let’s talk about that. Both characters are arguing that robots aren’t natural creatures, they weren’t made by any God, but by man, and shouldn’t be around people as much as they are. They aren’t for companionship, they’re for drudgery. Emma notes in R.U.R. that a dog won’t even go near a dog because it is not natural and not to be trusted (I would hazard a guess that she makes this comparison because, generally, you shouldn’t trust someone your dog doesn’t like). Mrs. Weston’s comment is a lot weirder than that. It’s only in response to her husband that she makes this robot < dog comparison. She’s not really rational about the whole thing, is she? She’s more worried about what the town thinks about her letting her child play with a robot than the safety of her child.
From Katrina:
ReplyDeleteAsimov being one of my favorite writers, he did not fail to impress me with his ability to reach out to an audience that surpasses just sc-fi fans. I loved the relationship he created between Robbie and Gloria, building a bridge between human and robot. Asimov immediately allows a connection with the reader and Robbie, illuminating how kind and sentimental he can be. But he still provides the stark contrast and prominent reminders that Robbie is in fact pieces of metal, constructed solely for the purpose of doing what used to be a human’s job.
I liked the point that Justin brought up about the talking robot trying to process the concept of him being a part of a group. That enticed me as well because it got me thinking that a major part of ‘being human’ is the feeling and comfort of people a part of a community. Asimov draws a striking line here when the robot is unable to process this information. And then goes on to write that these talking models were discontinued anyways. In response to Justin’s question, I would argue that yes this ability to communicate and awareness of other like-beings could very well spark a revolution. Humans have an incredible ability to network and expand their ideas by communicating with one another through a community. I believe that that same process could be applied to a super-smart thinking machine. Especially if it’s designed to solve problems and act quickly –such as Robbie when he saved Gloria.