Cobb

� Heidegger, Reality TV and Blackness | Main | Afro-Netizen at the DNC �

July 26, 2004

Roboto Redux

I finally saw I Robot this weekend. It had a weird balance between action and sci-fi. Were it not such a shameless vehicle for Will Smith it might have been a more interesting entertainment. For some reason, the phrase 'Cool Pose' kept flashing in the back of my head as I watched his character.

Anyway, I Robot was somehow a bit less interesting than the concept of 'We Robots' embedded in the story. The more I think about the extraordinary logical frame upon which all the macho junk of 'I Robot' hangs, the more disappointed I am in the film. The dramatic exploitation of these concepts was completely subordinated to Smith's left bicep, which turns out to be the movie's only interactive allusion to human sexuality of which the film is otherwise devoid. Not familiar with the original story (hard to believe ain't it?) I found the revolutionary hook fairly interesting. The idea that one race of robots would war against another for the right to take care of humanity is fascinating. The film's director decided to embed these revelations deep into action, so that instead of close-ups on the stars' faces as dialog is revealed, Will Smith gets to punch somebody with his bionic arm, or burn rubber on his motorcycle. You might watch the film and completely miss this concept, instead reacting to the idea that the robots have declared a curfew on humans as a power grab for a bogus emergency.

But the emergence of synthetic consciousness is not bogus. It's actually more dramatically and sweepingly (implied) in this story than it is in 'AI'. The great revelation of this story is that robots have come to the inescapable logic that human sacrifice is a necessary component of human freedom. Instead of languishing as sentient pets to be humiliated and destroyed, Asimov's robots take command of human philosophy and push it to its logical conclusions. Devoted as they are to the purpose of human freedom, they are willing to take some away to deliver larger hunks of it to the masses.

In such a world, who would want to be the head of a large multinational? It would be a huge risk to be evaluated with precision by the degrees of freedom your enterprise creates or destroys on a global scale. Heh, shades of 'Robocop', the head dog is whooped by the robocop technology he built.

So let me go ther and bring back the other stuff I was talking about. I last asked to think not of robots in this film, but 'Thirds', my newspeak vocab-bite for Third Worlders - immigrant grunt workers. The realization of ever polite robots in the film gives humans a sense of entitlement without guilt. Something we don't quite avoid when the people who do our scut work speak a different language. But it's interesting that the kind of symbiosis established in Neal Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' between the NeoVictorians and the next down class of artisans who make all of the wool, wood, leather and horsey items the Vickies fetishise is not established when there is a language barrier. But with the robots' flawless manners and English, a workable intimacy is taken for granted in I Robot's future.

America is the perfect setting for such an evolution. It suggests that our laziness is useful after all. We will become inventive enough to build and arm agents of our greatest wisdom. Then we can kick back and have a Bud. We can only hope that their pettiness is as transparent to us as ours would be to them.

Posted by mbowen at July 26, 2004 03:16 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2255

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Roboto Redux:

� Roboto Redux from Booker Rising
Cobb reviews Will Smith's latest action flick, "I Robot." His verdict? "Anyway, I Robot was somehow a bit less interesting than the concept of 'We Robots' embedded in the story. The more I think about the extraordinary logical frame upon which all th... [Read More]

Tracked on July 27, 2004 07:32 AM

Comments

Posted by: TLL at July 28, 2004 10:48 AM