Skip to content

LastSuperpower

Sections
Personal tools
You are here: Home » Forums » Main Forum » Literature about the future
 

 cool Literature about the future

Document Actions
Replies: 6   Views: 12387
Up one level
You need to be a registered member to post to this forum. Register now.
Prev topic | Next topic

cool Literature about the future

Posted by keza at 2006-04-09 04:13 PM


I just read Cory Doctorow's short story "I robot".   He's deliberately  appropriated the title from Asimov - he says  that he'd like "to write a series of stories with the same titles as famous sf shorts, which would pick apart the totalitarian assumptions underpinning some of sf's classic narratives."

It's a good read and Doctorow has made it freely available on-line (as he does with all his books). You can get it  here.  (It's only about 45 pages long  and was recently  nominated for the Hugo Award).


Basically the story is an attack on Asimov's famous three laws which were designed to  keep robots subservient to humans.  For those who are unfamiliar with them, the three laws are:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.


Reading science fiction is both fun and a good way to stimulate thoughts about the future.

I'm now reading another book by Doctorow - "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" (about 200 pages) .  It too is available on-line.  You can get it here.   There are some interesting discussions about it on this page   and you can read a short excerpt from it  here

When I've finished . Down and out... , I'll write a bit more about  it - and also about  i robot

Just posting this now in case other  people want to start reading and post their thoughts.



Manager
Posts: 593

 • Re: Literature about the future

Posted by tomb at 2006-04-13 06:28 AM
read the book and figure it must be a sometime down the track as beijing is the good guys. Not sure if the future challenges will be the same as those of today. I yhink we might be looking at something less internal and divisive to humans.
Member
Posts: 129

 • Re: Literature about the future

Posted by tomb at 2006-04-13 08:12 PM
are there any positive s/f books out there about an exciting future with some attempt to account for the social consequences of economic and technological development. Most seem to be a one sided argument focusing on one aspect of technology and ignoring the consequences for human development
Member
Posts: 129

 • I Robot

Posted by keza at 2006-04-13 10:00 PM
I haven't read much sci fi recently.

But my impression is that most  sci fi  doesn't  do a very good job of relating economic and social issues to technological change. 

"I robot" (Doctorow's version) contrasts a future society ( Beijing based) with a future society (Nth American based).  The human possibilities  in Beijing are more advanced and exciting because people there have embraced robots and developed  an integrated human-robot society. However in the more backward part of the world, robots are seen as servile, lesser creatures who only exist to obey humans.    This has led to a creeping totalitarianism involving constant attempts to hold back technology and prevent people having access to it in a fully fledged form ( ie robots which are not bound by the 3 laws are outlawed and seen as a terrible threat).  At the same time,  the people in control are prepared to secretly  use "non-3-law robots" themselves in order to maintain their own power.

It's a fairly simple and unrealistic scenario,  but it does raise issues about  how  developments in robotics  will give rise  to possibilities  which  will conflict  with the continuation of social conditions in which a few people run things and  everybody else just turns up for work  (although Doctorow  doesn't  himself raise this issue, it's only implicit).

The more obvious issue  is the one of whether humans have the right to (try to) prevent robots from developing into fully fledged people.

I think that Asimov did face this issue and wasn't as totalitarian in his attitude to robots as Doctorow seems to think he was.  I haven't read any Asimov in a while, but from memory I think he did see his 3 laws as extremely problematic in that they led to numerous paradoxes and conuundrums.
Manager
Posts: 593

 • Re: Literature about the future

Posted by tomb at 2006-04-13 11:20 PM
I suppose I saw the 3 laws as being resolved before we get robotics to that point, but maybe not. The development of nano technology would seem to me to exclude any chance of those laws being enforceable. I am not even sure what robots would be. and what they would do. With nano they seem to be redundant before they devlop to that point. We in fact may be the robots!
Member
Posts: 129

 • Re: Literature about the future

Posted by keza at 2006-04-13 11:31 PM


We already are robots!  Organic, highly developed ones.  Being "flesh and blood"  doesn't make us  not  also  complex machines.  

Developments in robotics will enable us to enhance the machinery we were born with and I think that's really great.   In "I robot", Doctorow was  basically making a case  for  the possibilities  opened up  by humans (organic robots)  working closely with inorganic robots and at the same time enhancing themselves with extra bits of  inorganic machinery.
Manager
Posts: 593

 • Re: Literature about the future

Posted by tomb at 2006-04-14 05:43 AM
I have a feeling that when we become more robot-like we won't need robots other than those to do menial tasks which we wouldn't want to be frustrated by -  but this gets into the questions "what is a robot?" and "what is an automation?"
Member
Posts: 129

 
Powered by Plone

This site conforms to the following standards: