On Sun, 11 Mar 2007 22:17:21 -0400, "Frank J. Lhota"
rcn.com> wrote:
>Enough of the "Inspector Gadget" talk! Let's discuss a more interesting
>robot show: "Big O". Much of this series revolves around the interactions
>between the human and android characters, especially that very special
>relationship between our hero Roger Smith and his lovely robotic live-in
>assistant, R. Dorothy Wayneright. Neither Rogor nor Dorothy seem comfortable
>about discussing their feelings towards each other, although their actions
>clearly indicate a special bond between the two. The subtlety of this
>romance that dares not speak its name gives the series a lot of its appeal.
>
>Robot romance seems to be a common theme in anime. Entire series are based
>upon this premise: "Chobits", "Steel Angel Kurumi", "Oh My Goddess". This
>theme is so common that it has developed its own set of cliches.
>
>For example, when the drawbacks to human / android marriage is discussed,
>how often have we heard the old canard about how the human will grow old and
>die, while his/her robot mate will remain young and beautiful? Did you ever
>stop to think that in real life, machines age even faster than humans? Think
>about the PC you had 10 years ago -- would you really want to use it now?
I do use it now. I have it set up in the living room and I use it for
writing and looking at JPGs while I'm watching TV.
>How about your 1997 TV set?
It's on a shelf in my office. I use it while doing this.
>Your car from 10 years ago?
I am still driving my car from 10 years ago.
Your 1990's video
>game console? Let's face it, people can cope with new technologies much
>better than machines can. People can move from writing Pascal programs for
>MS-DOS to writing Java programs for the net, but a 286 machine will always
>be a 286 machine. It's surprizing that fear of the robot's aging (in the
>form of obsolescence) has never made it into the robot romances.
Well first of all, "aging" is not "obsolescence". Nor is the current
explosion in computer technology something we can expect to continue
in perpetuity. I suspect that it would be a great deal harder to make
radical advances in computer technology by the time we advanced to the
point where we have brain sized computers so equal to us that we could
literally fall in love with them without being delusory. It's like
China or Japan. At first they experience explosive economic growth
because they are down so low that it is easy to radically improve. For
a while it looks like they will rise to unquestioned economic
dominance through a simplistic extrapolation of their current growth.
But then...it doesn't happen. They don't stop growing or advancing,
but it gets harder to take the next step and they slow down.
Apart from that,android obsolescence has made it into Ghost in Shell:
SAC. It was the motive for one of the criminal's crimes although I
have difficulty remembering the details of exactly what he did and why
because at the time, it didn't quite make sense to me. But he was in
love with his extensively upgraded sex doll, and I think he was
destroying all the others so he'd have all of the no longer-produced
replacement parts for himself.
Of course, the truth is, it's only relatively simple, sturdy machines
that have enormous life expectancies. A prototype android with full
AI, as is typical in cartoons would have about the same functional
life expectancy as your average heart transplant patient even if it
was very successful. Even an android manufactured with mature
technology would still be so complex that you wouldn't expect it to
really last longer than your average automobile unless it was very
carefully protected and didn't actually do much. While you could
rebuild it when it broke down, sooner or later there'd be a
catastrophic brain malfunction that, even if repaired would effective
be the creation of a new intelligence rather than a preservation of
the old.
Several
>comedies have dealt with the issue of machine aging: "Futurama" /
>"Obsoletely Fabulous" and "The Brak Show" / "Obsolescence Day" episodes come
>to mind, but can't think of a anroid love story where this issue arose.
>
>So perhaps a possible "Big O" storyline will have a storyline where Roger
>and R. Dorothy go to Massachusetts and make their relationship legal, but
>then their wedded bliss is spoiled by Dorothy's concern that Roger will dump
>her for a new model with a blu-ray hairband.
