[extropy-chat] Re: Asimov

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> 
> >While it wasn't at the
> >forefront in his novels, his robots did, in fact, send ships all
> over
> >the galaxy committing genocide via terraforming against any number
> of
> >intelligent alien races, which is why in the Foundation series only
> >humans inhabit the galaxy.
> 
> It's years since I dragged myself through the ruinous bloat of
> Asimov's 
> sequels, but I have the impression that this final solution was due
> not to Asimov but to Benford, Bear and Brin after his death. (It's a
> perfectly consistent deeply fucked-up solution, however.)

Actually, in "Robots of Dawn", we saw that the murder which Giskard
committed was directly the result of the political debate on Aurora
between sending out robotic systems to terraform planets versus human
exploration and settlement.

The final solution we read of in the Second Foundation series by
Benford Bear and Brin was merely a natural consequence of the plot that
Asimov set up in the original robot novels, and portrayed as the final
result in the galactic civilization of the pre-Foundation era. Since he
said that the latter was the direct result of the former

> 
> Either way, I, ROBOT was a collection of Asimov's earliest robot
> tales, with only the Three Laws in play. That allowed all kinds of
> remarkable 
> casuistry--such as the world-governing Machines, and perhaps a robot 
> passing itself off as human in order to become President--but there
> was *zero* opportunity for hordes of amok robots.

Well, we may see that the plot has robots amok BEFORE the three laws
are implemented, as a rationalization for their creation. This would
fit in with the typical Hollywood politics: engineer a media crisis
that sows fear in the populace, to justify confiscation of liberty in
the form of more regulation.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                         -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


	
		
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