I, Robot
I’m going to go see "I, Robot" today. I think it might be good, but I don’t know. I just found this article about how the movie betrays Asimov’s vision. In his novel, he argued against man’s superstitious fear of machines. Anytime the robots were appearing to do wrong in his novel, it turns out that they were really acting in man’s best interest and it was the humans who were misguided. His novel ended with the machines running the economy & the government. It was pro-robot. Full disclosure: I have not read the novel, I’m repeating what the article said, but now I am curious to see how different the movie really is…maybe I will read the novel for myself. The article says that movie elevates feelings & emotions over reason, which is not the vision Asimov had. Hmmm. I guess I will see when I go watch the movie. It’s always disappointing when Hollywood changes classics like this. I hope that this is not the case.
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I’ve seen the movie, and I would agree that it betrays Asimov’s vision. The movie is more of a reflection of our current distrust of computers and of society’s discomfort with increasingly ubiquitous computing than it is a reflection of Asimov’s book. And, while the movie did not turn Susan Calvin into a bimbo robot shrink like the previews suggested, the film’s portrayal of her as an emotionless, logically driven scientist suggests that it’s not a good thing for her to be so logically oriented. It appears that Hollywood still hasn’t figured out how to portray intelligent, logical woman as multidimensional characters.