So I've been contemplating inserting the age-old stigma of androids/robots into my ongoing novel. I didn't want to at first, but I don't think its that huge a stretch to suggest that fully functional androids doing the jobs we all hate, etc. would exist in the next hundred years in some form, big or small.
So, what do my fellow sci-fi fans and writers think? Are androids a good idea or a sure way to turn people off from the novel? And if they did exist, what would they be like? Very humanoid and assimilated as "people" in society, or more like the type in the (ill-adapted) I, Robot movie?
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"When asked, 'How do you write?' I invariably answer, 'One word at a time.' "
~ Stephen King
20,040 / 50,000
Dec 2, 2008 - 09 14
Never seen I, Robot before. But I think that it's possible to make a novel with or without androids. My novel, for example, doesn't have robots or anything of the sort. It's got humans, and aliens, that's it, only one species of aliens too, two species in the entire galaxy, what galaxy? wait till the third book (Next year's nano) to find out.
----------50,675 / 50,000
Dec 2, 2008 - 13 22
Robots? Sure.
The thing about science and technology is that as they improve, not only do we learn more and get cooler gadgets, but the RATE at which we learn more and get cooler gadgets also improves. It's because better science leads to better equipment for doing science, which leads to faster science and more discovery, which leads to better equipment, and on and on and on.
The last half of the 19th century saw more scientific and technical progress than the prior, oh, let's just call it 200 years and we'll be on the safe side. And the next 50 years saw probably 10 times more progress, even, than that. And the 50 years from 1950 to 2000 saw more progress, change, and technological advancement than pretty much all of human history put together.
So what will the next 100 years bring? Multiply the last 50 years by 10, and then by 10 again, and you're probably on the right track. A hundred years from now, robots will probably be as common as doorknobs. Except, hell, 100 years from now we might not have doorknobs anymore--who knows.
In many ways, Star Wars provides what is probably a pretty decent (if sometimes hokey) vision for the integration of droids into sentient society. Lots of specialization, sentience and self-awareness in the droids, and an emerging social/caste system that relegates droids to a lower status.
----------Crashdown (YA sci-fi / horror)
Stranded on an alien world, Ruve must deny his own humanity in order to survive. To get home, he'll need the help of someone back here on Earth. If, that is, he can convince anyone here that he's real.
20,040 / 50,000
Dec 2, 2008 - 14 34
Yeah, I pretty much agree with that. Went straight from seven shot rifles to machine guns in maybe about fifty years at most.
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Dec 8, 2008 - 11 23
Which also neatly demonstrates how much faster technology and science moves when we're busy trying to kill each other. So exspect military bots to lead the technology before it gets civilianized at finds it's way in to people's homes.
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Dec 8, 2008 - 18 22
If you want to see an outstanding depiction of androids in the future, pick up a copy of Isaac Asimov's "Robot Dreams". It's a collection of short stories that simply can't be beat for philosophical issues regarding artificial intelligence -- questions of awareness, obedience, integration in society, and the like. (There are also a few fascinating stories in it that have nothing to do with robots.) I cannot recommend this collection highly enough.
This is a popular theory, but it's sort of present-centric. We tend to view our breakthroughs as bigger and more important because we're closer to them. You could just as easily argue that we're putting our greater and greater resources into more and more esoteric things which create smaller and smaller breakthroughs.
55,023 / 50,000
Dec 10, 2008 - 11 05
Agreed, wonderful collection as is everything from Azimov. However, because of Azimov, robots will likely also be restrained from becoming generic human replacements and they won't look anthropomorphic. They will remain task-specific for centuries. You want one that clears the table and washes the dishes? Fine, install it in a cabinet - it has an arm, a six-axis wrist, a foam tipped gripper, and a simple RISC processor with a flexible but limited program. In restaurants it may be more the trash-can on wheels as found in several Larry Niven stories. There is no need for simulated intelligence in a mobile platform.
Approximations of intelligence will be more like automated advisors on the internet, or the main computers in 'I, Robot', 'Wargames', or 'Terminator' which may try to take control of a nation's economy or military. Similar could be said of the Dyson computer installed on the Enterprise (the original series) rendering Kirk as Captain Dunso.
Well, that's what I forsee anyway. But then Asimov and others wrote of robots and androids for their ability to illuminate specific issues in society. If it's critical to the story and/or issue, then make 'em how you need 'em.
7,252 / 50,000
Dec 11, 2008 - 08 41
Good point, the way we build and use robots/androids does reflect the state of mind of the society that uses them.
Robots may not need to look human and in most cases it wouldn't be practical to make them so, but at the same time we are, as a race, fascinated by the idea to build something that resembles us (maybe it's a God complex).
I would advise to read Philip K. Dick's novel "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" if you want to get some more food for thought.
That's what it comes down to, though if you want to stay on the realistic side much as possible I wouldn't write about self aware machines the likes of HAL9000. Machines that seem to show awareness are very probable, a machine that has a 'sense' of her construction limits and that can plot out and handle tasks on her own would certainly be reasonable.
Mostly it's a question of our understanding how to program robots and the tasks we want to use them for.
0 / 50,000
Dec 11, 2008 - 20 22
Like this?
55,023 / 50,000
Dec 13, 2008 - 12 50
I didn't cite that example, though that specific thought passed my mind, because it frankly isn't that good. If the operator sets it up wrong at the bottom of a set of stairs, it'll fall down before reaching the top.
50,056 / 50,000
Dec 16, 2008 - 21 55
Maybe. The thing about the human shape is that it's very versatile - especially since most things in the urban world have been specifically built to suit that shape.
Sure, you could build a dishwashing bot. But why have a bot that just washes the dishes when you could have one that also hangs the washing out, vacuums the carpet, waters the plants, picks your kid up from school and drives the car to the shop to be repaired[1]?
[1] Okay, at that tech level the car can probably drive itself, but you get the idea...