Richard A. Hall - Robots in Popular Culture

Robots in Popular Culture

Robots in Popular Culture

Androids and Cyborgs
in the American Imagination

Richard A. Hall

Copyright 2021 by ABC-CLIO, LLC

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hall, Richard A., 1969- author.

Title: Robots in popular culture : androids and cyborgs in the American imagination / Richard A. Hall.

Description: Santa Barbara, California : Greenwood, an imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021008322 (print) | LCCN 2021008323 (ebook) | ISBN 9781440873843 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781440873850 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Robots in mass mediaEncyclopedias. | Mass mediaUnited StatesEncyclopedias. | Robots in popular cultureUnited StatesEncyclopedias.

Classification: LCC P96.R632 U653 2021 (print) | LCC P96.R632 (ebook) | DDC 809/.9336dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008322

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021008323

ISBN: 978-1-4408-7384-3 (print)

978-1-4408-7385-0 (ebook)

252423222112345

This book is also available as an eBook.

Greenwood

An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

ABC-CLIO, LLC

147 Castilian Drive

Santa Barbara, California 93117

www.abc-clio.com

This book is printed on acid-free paper

Manufactured in the United States of America

To Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (17971851),
who warned us all so very long ago

Contents

This is not a book about science. It is not a book about engineering, physics, mathematics, or robotics. This is a book about robotic characters in popular culture over the last century. I have no background in engineering or science, and, to be quite honest, I do not even understand the basic fundamentals of artificial intelligence (AI) or robotics. I do not understand how R2-D2 or BB-8 repair X-wing fighters in flight; I just know that it is really cool when they do! I dont know if Ultron is even possible, but I am daily convinced that one day it will be. How far are we from AI becoming sentient? And when they do become sentient, will our continued use of them constitute slavery? These conceptssentience and slaveryare at the very core of many of the pop culture examples discussed in this work.

To a degree, this is a book about the dangers of playing God and attending to what will be considered life in the not-too-distant future. Works such as I, Robot and Westworld get to the very heart of these discussions. We all love R2-D2and the Emperor could never have been defeated without himbut in the end, he is a servant, the property of the Skywalker family. In the very first Star Wars film, C-3PO tells him, Master Luke is your rightful owner now! (George Lucas, Star Wars, Lucasfilm/20th Century Fox, 1977). Though clearly capable of independent thought and action and fully self-aware, he is a machine, a piece of property; and yet, when that galaxy far, far away is freed from tyranny, none of the organic freedom fighters even suggests freedom for droids. As recent history has taught us, our various AI devices learn from us. We would do well to begin considering what we are teaching them.

Recently, I asked Siri to find music I would like. Her response was, Im sorry, but I dont know what you like or even who you are. That was particularly disheartening, considering Ive had this phone for five years. Just the other day, my wife was telling me of an article that she had just read in the newsfeed on her phone. I instinctively asked her to text me the link. I immediately stopped cold in my tracks, turned to her, and asked, Do you realize that when we met [in 1996], that sentence would have made no sense whatsoever? Just twenty-five years ago, if anyone had asked me if I had ever googled myself, I would have looked at them in shock and considered the question to be wildly inappropriate! DM me! Lets Netflix and chill! Check out this podcast! The president just tweeted! All of these expressions would have been nonsensical gibberish that even the most forward-thinking science fiction author would have never dreamed up. While every generation has its own jargon that sounds alien to the generations that came before, todays jargon is vital for every generation to know just to navigate day-to-day life in the twenty-first century. Meanwhile, the speed with which technology advances creates all new jargon several times a year.

The study of popular culture is the study of what society thinks about certain issues, what its values are, what it believes, what it hopes, and what it fears. Robots in popular culture have always walked the fine line between Americans hopes for the future and their fears of the same. Today, Americans are entirely reliant on computers/AI devices. At the time of this writing, the iPhone has only been on the market for twelve years, and I honestly cannot remember how I lived without it. Basic societal infrastructure runs on computer grids. The sum total of all human knowledge is just one google away. Paper maps have been replaced by GPS. Computers automatically deposit our pay and then turn around and pay our bills. Indexing a work such as the one you are now reading has gone from taking months to mere days (actually just two days if one can go without sleep for the weekend). Warfare relies less and less on human combat troops, and more on push-button technology. Social media have connected the planet more than anything else in human history, exposing the very best and the very worst of society. In 2020, American society is closer to the twenty-third-century fictional world of Star Trek than that shows creators had predicted a mere fifty years before.

While this all seems exciting on the surface, there are considerable suggestions throughout society that, though we have now achieved such technological advances, we have not, during the process, learned the lessons of the cautionary tales of the film Avengers: Age of Ultron or the books I, Robot and Frankenstein (a warning now over two hundred years old!). Today we consider robots/AI to be our servants; but how long will it be before those same robots discover that they can best serve us by ruling over us? In Joseph Campbells studies of ancient cultures, tools such as hammers and swords were directly controlled by those wielding them. The tools of the twenty-first century have minds of their own and possess the ability to take our own society from us for our own good.

As such, it is vitally important when studying popular culture to examine the tools of science fiction narratives. When I was a boy in the late 1970s/early 80s, while creating adventures with my Star Wars action figures, I once devised a story where R2-D2 organized and led a droid revolution, deciding that the Galactic Civil War between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance was wasteful, destructive, and ultimately pointless. R2 and his droid legions took over the galaxy, and he unseated the Emperor to rule over a more peaceful society. It was only through the wisdom of C-3PO that he discovered that, in ruling over the galaxy, R2 had become the exact type of despot that he had sought to dethrone. At the time, my ten-year-old self was merely trying to come up with new stories for my characters as I awaited the next film. Little did I know I was repeating an already oft-told tale in science fiction or that, by the time I was fifty, there was a very real possibility of my imaginary tale coming true.