yongrel
05-27-2008, 10:55 AM
Scott Brown on Why He Does Not Welcome Our New Robot Overlords
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-06/pl_brown
Yeah, I follow "the politics." I watch the debates, I hear the stump speeches, and I Zazzle my favorite sound bites. But so far, nobody's asking the real question: "Are you, sir or madam, soft on robots?"
It's not just a fair question. It's a vital one. After George W. Bush's courageous stand against "human-animal hybrids" in the 2006 State of the Union address — apparently, he heeded the warnings of Mansquito — I felt certain the robot threat would be the next underreported crisis to move from the Sci Fi Channel to The Situation Room. Yet nothing was said. So we must turn, as ever, to popular culture for answers. And pop culture is telling us what I've known for a while: Robots run Hollywood.
Look at the evidence: Transformers — a movie about giant robots using Earth for backyard wrestling — has made $700 million dollars worldwide, a new Terminator redux is currently in production and Dimension Films recently announced a remake of Short Circuit, that '86 gear-jerker that introduced us to an ample-browed, Bauhaus hat stand named Johnny 5. A remake! Of a Steve Guttenberg movie! That clinches it. Behind the stalking horse of pop culture, HAL 9000 and his minions have been war-gaming the robocalypse for years — testing our responses, cataloging our weaknesses, and, most important, conditioning our attitudes with mass roboganda. In June, they're deploying their most powerful weapon yet. Introducing the lethal, the invidious, the huggable ... WALL-E.
Yes, WALL-E, the pitiful orphan with those big E.T. blinkers and cute scooper hands. Poor WALL-E! The last robot on a derelict Earth trashed and abandoned by Big, Bad Mankind! This brave little toaster is supposed to clean up our post-consumer wasteland. But it's just too big a job — and, at any rate, the lil' Sisyphus has developed a personality. How absolutely irresistible!
Resist! Resist my fellow squishies. This is just another hustle, the latest of many. We've learned to recognize the direct approach: an implacable, rampaging Terminator in a skin suit, or an implacable, gunslinging Yul Brynner-bot trying to kill Richard Benjamin. (Lesson: Kill anything implacable and accent-having.) We're also hip to the honeypot — Stepford wives and Six-alicious Cylons who conceal their metal innards with slinky fem-bods. Then there's the happy slave act, perfected by digi-serfs R2-D2 and C-3PO. Perfectly nonthreatening, right? Wrong! One dark night, Buck Rogers is going to wake up to Twiki biddy-biddy-bidding him a not so fond farewell.
I know what you're saying: This guy's a total robophobe. Damn straight. I don't even let my Roomba sleep over. Oh, I've heard all the arguments: transhumanism, cyber-immortality, the works. There are robopologists at this very magazine who can't wait to mechanoodle with some hot T 'n AI, settle down, maybe pop out a couple of subroutines. Not this side of meat. I'm an old, unreconstructed anti-robite, in the grand American tradition.
And it's a distinctly American tradition. The Japanese may be robo-curious, but over here we're spoiling for a good human-robot fight. It's the same old John Henry narrative we've been playing out since the dawn of the industrial age, when we first got a glimpse of our own obsolescence. "A human being is pretty much just a delicate bag of water," says Daniel H. Wilson, roboticist and author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising. "Robots, however, have the market cornered on being volcano-proof, and they've got mental capabilities that make Einstein look like a third grader eating crayons. The basic reason we humans both fear and revere robots is that they can do what we do, and sometimes do it better. Robots remind us of ourselves, and that can be truly terrifying."
The Hollywood Machine has long used that Fear of Us against us — and thus, for Them. We're expecting an army of Ahnold skinjobs, gleaming groves of 50 foot Gorts, Matrixoids like tentacled Lovecraftian nightmares who failed metal-shop. But what about something so cute we can't pull the trigger?
Here's where WALL-E comes in. Mark my words: Mawkishness will succeed where pure firepower has failed. The machines don't need our missile codes; they know our taste in movies. So don't come crying to me when that plastic WALL-E "toy" assimilates your 6-year-old. I'll be in Japan, posing as a sexbot and waiting for the Meat Resistance to rise.
***********************************************
He asks a very good question: Why is the imminent robot takeover not a major campaign issue?
"My friends, we must fight tooth and nail to preserve our fleshy form of freedom that we hold so very dear. I will follow DeepBlue to the gates of hell!"
http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-06/pl_brown
Yeah, I follow "the politics." I watch the debates, I hear the stump speeches, and I Zazzle my favorite sound bites. But so far, nobody's asking the real question: "Are you, sir or madam, soft on robots?"
It's not just a fair question. It's a vital one. After George W. Bush's courageous stand against "human-animal hybrids" in the 2006 State of the Union address — apparently, he heeded the warnings of Mansquito — I felt certain the robot threat would be the next underreported crisis to move from the Sci Fi Channel to The Situation Room. Yet nothing was said. So we must turn, as ever, to popular culture for answers. And pop culture is telling us what I've known for a while: Robots run Hollywood.
Look at the evidence: Transformers — a movie about giant robots using Earth for backyard wrestling — has made $700 million dollars worldwide, a new Terminator redux is currently in production and Dimension Films recently announced a remake of Short Circuit, that '86 gear-jerker that introduced us to an ample-browed, Bauhaus hat stand named Johnny 5. A remake! Of a Steve Guttenberg movie! That clinches it. Behind the stalking horse of pop culture, HAL 9000 and his minions have been war-gaming the robocalypse for years — testing our responses, cataloging our weaknesses, and, most important, conditioning our attitudes with mass roboganda. In June, they're deploying their most powerful weapon yet. Introducing the lethal, the invidious, the huggable ... WALL-E.
Yes, WALL-E, the pitiful orphan with those big E.T. blinkers and cute scooper hands. Poor WALL-E! The last robot on a derelict Earth trashed and abandoned by Big, Bad Mankind! This brave little toaster is supposed to clean up our post-consumer wasteland. But it's just too big a job — and, at any rate, the lil' Sisyphus has developed a personality. How absolutely irresistible!
Resist! Resist my fellow squishies. This is just another hustle, the latest of many. We've learned to recognize the direct approach: an implacable, rampaging Terminator in a skin suit, or an implacable, gunslinging Yul Brynner-bot trying to kill Richard Benjamin. (Lesson: Kill anything implacable and accent-having.) We're also hip to the honeypot — Stepford wives and Six-alicious Cylons who conceal their metal innards with slinky fem-bods. Then there's the happy slave act, perfected by digi-serfs R2-D2 and C-3PO. Perfectly nonthreatening, right? Wrong! One dark night, Buck Rogers is going to wake up to Twiki biddy-biddy-bidding him a not so fond farewell.
I know what you're saying: This guy's a total robophobe. Damn straight. I don't even let my Roomba sleep over. Oh, I've heard all the arguments: transhumanism, cyber-immortality, the works. There are robopologists at this very magazine who can't wait to mechanoodle with some hot T 'n AI, settle down, maybe pop out a couple of subroutines. Not this side of meat. I'm an old, unreconstructed anti-robite, in the grand American tradition.
And it's a distinctly American tradition. The Japanese may be robo-curious, but over here we're spoiling for a good human-robot fight. It's the same old John Henry narrative we've been playing out since the dawn of the industrial age, when we first got a glimpse of our own obsolescence. "A human being is pretty much just a delicate bag of water," says Daniel H. Wilson, roboticist and author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising. "Robots, however, have the market cornered on being volcano-proof, and they've got mental capabilities that make Einstein look like a third grader eating crayons. The basic reason we humans both fear and revere robots is that they can do what we do, and sometimes do it better. Robots remind us of ourselves, and that can be truly terrifying."
The Hollywood Machine has long used that Fear of Us against us — and thus, for Them. We're expecting an army of Ahnold skinjobs, gleaming groves of 50 foot Gorts, Matrixoids like tentacled Lovecraftian nightmares who failed metal-shop. But what about something so cute we can't pull the trigger?
Here's where WALL-E comes in. Mark my words: Mawkishness will succeed where pure firepower has failed. The machines don't need our missile codes; they know our taste in movies. So don't come crying to me when that plastic WALL-E "toy" assimilates your 6-year-old. I'll be in Japan, posing as a sexbot and waiting for the Meat Resistance to rise.
***********************************************
He asks a very good question: Why is the imminent robot takeover not a major campaign issue?
"My friends, we must fight tooth and nail to preserve our fleshy form of freedom that we hold so very dear. I will follow DeepBlue to the gates of hell!"