Today I was having a wonderful conversation with my friend Heather (who makes robots) about robots in your house. I don’t mean thermostats and dishwashers and automatic garage door openers all of those other practical robots that have been busily keeping your life in order for years while you weren’t looking.<\/p>\n
I’m talking about Rosie from “The Jetsons”. I’m talking about R2D2 and C3PO from “Star Wars”, Robbie from “Forbidden Planet”, Huey Dewey and Louie from “Silent Running”. In your house, making your bed, greeting you at the door, cooking your favorite meal or just hanging out. Maybe a bit like a beloved dog, except this one can play a mean game of chess.<\/p>\n
This is, of course, well trod territory. Asimov’s “Robot” series laid it all out for us decades ago. But in our culture something always seems to go wrong — eventually it all turns into Karel Kopek’s metaphor about repressed workers, and then things get bad. Somehow the robots figure out a way around Asimov’s three laws of robotics that are supposed to guarantee no harm to humans. Or Cylons spin out of control and start hunting us down. Or the Borg get really creative with used radio parts from Canal Street and end up looking like Maker Faire in hell.<\/p>\n
This isn’t the case in Japan by the way. They love their robots, and every Japanese kid’s fondest wish is to have his or her own electromechanical friend that truly understands them, is up for going on adventures, and fighting bad guys. And not just kids. Grownup Japanese people want one too.<\/p>\n
So what’s up with us? Why do our robots turn into scary monsters?<\/p>\n
Heather was quoted today in a New York Times article<\/a> with a very plausible explanation:<\/p>\n \n“The Japanese have always been more comfortable with it, but particularly in the West, there\u2019s this whole Frankenstein thing that if we try to make something in the image of man, to make a new creature, we\u2019re stealing the role of God, and it\u2019s going to turn out wrong because that\u2019s not our role.\u201d – Heather Knight, quoted in The New York Times, Feb 24, 2010<\/i>\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I completely concur. Our entire Judeo-Christian tradition tells us that we’re not supposed to create life (other than through the usual, um, channels). This all goes back a lot further than Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The myth of the Golem and similar ancient European tales have shared this cautionary theme. Use your human intelligence to make other intelligent creatures, and you’re screwed (notice, by the way, how the Roomba has cleverly slipped in under our paranoia radar by channeling the whole “inoffensive pet” thing).<\/p>\n I suspect our cultural robo-paranoia goes back even further. It’s a close cousin of the Greek notion of hubris<\/i>. Prometheus gives us fire, and the gods punish him for handing out one of their own divine powers like a party favor. Icarus, delighted by his newfound god-like ability to fly, forgets he’s not really<\/i> a god. And you know what happens next. <\/p>\n So why did this particular flavor of technophobia emerge in the West, but not in the East? I’d love to hear any theories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today I was having a wonderful conversation with my friend Heather (who makes robots) about robots in your house. I don’t mean thermostats and dishwashers and automatic garage door openers all of those other practical robots that have been busily keeping your life in order for years while you weren’t looking. I’m talking about Rosie … Continue reading “Robots in your house”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3269"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3278,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3269\/revisions\/3278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}