My boys like the movie, "Robots" -- it's a cute movie, beautifully computer-animated. Really very impressive along those lines. But I watch that movie, which is a perky parable of capitalism and a son finding his way and following his star, and, of course, me being me, my mind spins the story into something dark and dystopian.
I mean, this world resembles our own, but it's populated entirely by machines. Everybody's a robot. Robot dogs, robot birds, robot everything. But they're still doing very human things -- having families, eating "ice cream," going to parties (drinking evocative oil martinis with nuts in them in lieu of olives), frequenting corporate board meetings, and so on. They're machines pretending to be human beings (and they have emotions, too, mind you).
So, I look at it and cynically spin the story -- that this is a world where humanity fully managed to replace itself, having done so in a manner so completely that the machines that replaced us (since there are no organic lifeforms on this world -- even the trees are robots) don't even behave as machines would. They are living machines, and, thus, are imperfect creations, now, or appear to be.
Like why would a robot walk a robotic dog? Why would a robot own a robotic dog? When you think of robots (the word literally meaning "worker" in Czech, I think), volition and free will are not part of the equation. I write a lot about this in stories, one way or another.
You want to walk your dog, you get up and do it. You're doing it because your dog has to take a piss and could use the exercise. Hell, you could use the exercise, too.
But a robot dog owner would have to have been programmed to be a dog owner -- it wouldn't be something it just simply decided to do. And what point would there be to being a robotic dog? At one point, there's a moment when a robot dog tries to pee (?) on a robot fire hydrant -- the robotic hydrant then fights back, repelling the dog. A simple gag, played for kid-laughs.
However, it amuses me along different lines -- if you invent a robot dog, why have the dog need to pee to begin with? That's a biological function, not something a machine needs to do. These robots are busy simulating biological life, across the board. On face value, it's done so children can relate to the pretty robot world. But philosophically, it gets the gears (!) turning in my head, this simulation of life that is inherent in robotics. Man using technology to, in effect, recreate himself mechanically. Robots can't create themselves (at least not initially); they must be created. Once they are created, then they can do something about it, but they must be invented, first, before they can recreate themselves.
Simply put: WHERE are the humans in this world? Robots come from human beings, so where are the people? Did the machines replace humanity (e.g., wipe us out) and then, because we'd programmed them to be like us, just mechanically performed what we would have done? Or are these robots humanity themselves? That is, are they, in effect, the fullest expression of cybernetics, where people migrate themselves from biological to technological, until all trace of the organic is gone? Humanity's presence and absence from the movie is fascinating to me, and is bold. Clearly somebody had to have made these machines, long ago. Unless this is a world that was always mechanical (it's never said what this world is). But illogical contrivances like metal buttons on a robot's "suit" point to an illogical origin to the machines -- e.g., organic. Makers who created these machines in their own image. But where did humanity go? The absence of flesh-and-blood in the movie fascinates me, relative to the machine, since so much fiction with robots depends on the interaction of Man and Machine -- and in this movie, there is no Man, only Machine. The Machines won, and became us. Fascinating!
There are two competing philosophies in the movie -- the Good Guys are about finding yourself and following your dreams; the Bad Guys are about feeling bad about yourself and casting off the old in favor of the new (and, again, the notion of robots with low self-esteem is particularly ripe for exploration). Eventually, the Good Guys best the Bad Guys (of course), although nobody really gets hurt too badly (except for the baddest of the Bad Guys).
Anyway, the movie is light-hearted, is a comedy, but I find a lot of the questions it brings up very curious, compared with a far more self-serious movie like, say, "Wall-E" (which itself has a lot of consumerist criticism in it, but allows for humans in it). Without perhaps intending it, "Robots" is a bolder enterprise, since there simply ARE no humans in it -- just humanlike robots, doing humanlike things.
Check it out if you have the time, and watch it with a philosophical eye, and you'll see what I mean about it, that sense of the uncanny in watching robots interact in a clearly post-human world, yet doing very, very human things.
