[extropy-chat] I Robot commercial

[Max M]

Damien Broderick wrote:


>>During the trailers preceding LOTR they showed a fake "commercial"
>>for the NS-5, "the world's first fully automated domestic assistant".
>>At first I wasn't sure it was fake, until they flashed up "3 Laws
>>Safe!" as a selling point. 
> 
>>As I recall, I, Robot was actually a short story collection mostly about
>>the various ways robots could go wrong despite being "three laws safe".
> 
> Quite. That would be irony. (In American cinemas? Strange, I know.)


I Robot was among my first encounters with Sci-fi. Actually there was 
not a lot of translated sci-fi here in the DK. Asimov was one of the few 
translated authors I could get my hand on.

And I absolutely loved it adn re-read it a bunch of times!

Later on Asimov expanded the storyline with the "Steel Caves" series.

He also had the "Foundation" series, and in the end bothe series got 
connected in a very clever way. I loved that series too.

Well that was before cyberpunk came and changed my view on sci-fi.


R. Daneel Olivaw, the robot from the steel caves lives for a long time, 
and is a good example of a proto Post-human -robot.
http://homepage.mac.com/jhjenkins/Asimov/Books/Book011.html


A few days ago I saw a "sort of" movie adaptation of "I robot" 
Bicentennial Man (1999) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0182789/

It has Robin Williams as the robot, and the first part of it i thorougly 
enjoyed. But in the end he wanted to become human and die togther with 
his human wife. As if being human is the only thing to strive for.

So I couldn't disagree more with the morale of the story. Actually I got 
so disgusted that I stopped watching right there.

A robot that spent the entire movie trying to become more human, get 
stronger feeling, sensations etc., and when he finally does become human 
like, he comits suicide. Doh!

To bad.

I hope that "I Robot" will be better.


regards Max M Rasmussen, Denmark