robots

where do i begin? with Douglas Adams' amazingly sympathetic, depressed and humorous robot "Marvin" or how about with tragic magic head, or with the lyrics from one more robot by the flaming lips ....

Unit three thousand twenty one is warming
Makes a humming sound - when its circuits
Duplicate emotions - and a sense of coldness detaches
As it tries to comfort your sadness -

One more robot learns to be something more than
A machine - when it tries the way it does - make it seem
Like it can love -
Cause it's hard to say what's real - when you know the
Way you feel - is it wrong to think it's love
When it tries the way it does...

Feeling a synthetic kind of love
Dreaming a sympathetic wish -
As the lights blink faster and brighter -

One more robot learns to be something more than
A machine - when it tries the way it does - make it seem
Like it can love -
Cause it's hard to say what's real - when you know the
Way you feel - is it wrong to think it's love
When it tries the way it does...

... this song is magical to me. it is what every one of my poems about robots is launched from. a sad little robot boy doing everything in his power to love.

robots (or mechanoids or androids or whatever you want to call them) are to me as subways were to George Oppen (he took the subway around new york at random popping his head up at every stop along the way and the result of such an adventure was Discrete Series, widely regarded as his best work and one of my favorite collections of modern poetry, though i yet to own a copy).

robots are essential empty vessels. they are children with the complex understanding of maths, of anatomy or sociology, of all these omy's and ology's. yet they are but children in a state of perpetual misunderstanding. they cannot feel love; yet, the see it, they comprehend it's use, it's function. they can duplicate it, they can act it, but they can never feel it.

people have commented on some of my poems as representing an autistic individual, wondering if i'd maybe had a friend or family member with the disorder, but i haven't. the closest i've come to autism is through movies, and i'm not moved by it. what i am moved by is the idea that so much sympathy is devoted to humans without human emotions (recently there was a little girl featured on some morning news show, this little girl had no pain receptors, she could not feel pain. she lives a normal life, however, she damaged her vision by scratching her eyes too often and too hard, hurting herself without feeling it) yet i don't see many people sympathizing with robots who are essentially just humans without emotions.

okay, robots aren't necessarily a main-stream technology, but we see them and we know that there is a future for them. do we sympathize with a little round disk that cleans up after us all day like we would a slave? no. will we in 60 years? probably not. because the robots won't rebel, they won't fight. all that hollywood nonsense about robots turning evil on their own accord? that won't happen, because robots don't make mistakes, though, they can only be as magnificent as their creator.

i love robots because of their potential, because they are a reflection of the human that creates them. if we still held a World's Fair, it would be filled with talking cars and robotic wives. i also think that there is an underlying fear, that the machine will once again replace man. this is something hollywood projects quite unabashedly.

there are so many elements of why i adore the idea of robot for me to really pan them out here in an email, though i want to. i have given them much thought, but never have i tried to project that thought through written word. perhaps this would prove a challenging topic for my next poetics.

oh and "robot" is also a magnificent word. one of my favorites along with the word astronaut. but in short, i read too many Philip K Dick novels.

i hope that sheds some light on the matter. though i may have only raised me questions than given any one answer. let me know.

and thank you so much for asking me that question!