More ASIMO Questions
I was thinking about the movie Metropolis and found the shift in the worker’s attitudes throughout the movie very interesting. Their first reaction was to naturally destroy the machine that enslaved them. But as the movie progressed, there seemed to be a shift towards the idea that maybe the machine is not so bad after all because not only does it enslave the workers, it also provides a source of energy for the city.
This change in attitude made me remember a conversation I had with a friend last week about ASIMO, the humanoid robot manufactured by Honda. This other person took a more positive outlook on the matter, and said, “what about elderly people that are living in care homes? They would like that.” – echoing some of the same ideas used on Honda’s website to market ASIMO. I agreed with my friend and did not think much of it, assuming that of course it would be nice if there were robots that could help elderly people with day to day tasks.
But another thought came to me: What repercussions would this have on the elderly person receiving the aid?
I figure that the person would either be gung-ho about getting the extra help or very depressed because not only do they have to live in a care home, now human interaction has probably been minimized drastically. Do you think this reduction of human interaction would have a positive or negative effect on the person’s identity and self-esteem, things that contribute significantly to a person’s quality of life? Or do you think this would have other negative or positive effects on the person?
This change in attitude made me remember a conversation I had with a friend last week about ASIMO, the humanoid robot manufactured by Honda. This other person took a more positive outlook on the matter, and said, “what about elderly people that are living in care homes? They would like that.” – echoing some of the same ideas used on Honda’s website to market ASIMO. I agreed with my friend and did not think much of it, assuming that of course it would be nice if there were robots that could help elderly people with day to day tasks.
But another thought came to me: What repercussions would this have on the elderly person receiving the aid?
I figure that the person would either be gung-ho about getting the extra help or very depressed because not only do they have to live in a care home, now human interaction has probably been minimized drastically. Do you think this reduction of human interaction would have a positive or negative effect on the person’s identity and self-esteem, things that contribute significantly to a person’s quality of life? Or do you think this would have other negative or positive effects on the person?
posted by Warren at 7:05 AM
10 Comments:
The shifts in the workers' attitudes (and the director's?) make Metropolis into something more than mere propaganda (pro-workers, anti-machine). Always on the verge of a strong black & white/good vs. evil statement, the film seems to often portray an ambivalence toward technology and human-machines. Questions:
The M-machine (Moloch machine) is portrayed as monstrous, a huge gaping-mouthed demon consuming the workers (moloch = something that requires a costly and painful sacrifice, making reference to a god to whom children were supposedly sacrificed. See Wikipedia, Moloch in Medieval Texts, Flaubert's Conception, and Moloch as a Metaphor in Modern Art). Clearly, the machine here is demonic.
And yet, as Grot exclaims to the mob of workers (something along the lines of): "You fools! don't you know you need the machines to live?" When they destroy the machines, they destroy their livelihood, and almost destroy their children. ...But clearly the machine has made the workers themselves machinelike.
And what about the other human-machines? Rotwang (is he the first cyborg in film?) clearly is just a bit deranged. But then the question is: to what does he owe his madness? The infidelity of the woman Hel? Or the devotion to science/playing God? He is surely the mad scientist figure at its very birth.
The real question for me seems to hinge on this teetering back and forth between evil-as-machine and evil-as-woman. That android/robot /Cyborg? creature, the "man-machine" until it becomes "Maria" is truly representing all sorts of evils inherent in human desires. She is associated at one point with the Whore of Babylon, and the fetishized version of the human machine is all too apparent here. So often, the female android or cyborg becomes a sign of evil desires...
So is it the machine that's evil, or the desirable and powerful woman? (Hel and the android both). And what about that Heart, Head, Hand business in terms of both the human and machine (city) body? (So clearly leaving out the bodily geography of desires: mouths, stomachs, genitals..)
Hey, why not just take everyone's brains out of their bodies, make them immortal and hook them to a machine that gives them perpetual heroin-like pleasure?
This thought comes from the perspective of thinking about, surprisingly enough, the question of the elderly person's recieving care from a robot. Surely there aren't many people who like to hang around with feeble old people and change their diapers (sorry for being so blatant about it), but then again it doesn't seem like a lot of people would really enjoy working in a morgue. In both cases, there is a profession of doing that kind of work because there are people who will do it. I think the dream of everyone wallowing in economic prosperity as they achieve more and more (to what end?) as started by the Industrial Revolution, has really been disproven. Having 1940's-future fair style robots doing your cooking and cleaning for you is not going to make the world a better place. Indeed, all it is going to do is pad more comfortably the already ultra-comfortable and padded lifestyle of the world's richest elite. Honda is clearly just one more group of cynical profiteers masking their own greed and economic imperative with good-for-the-world rhetoric.
For someone that criticized the early portions of Metropolis for seeming like Marxist propaganda, it seems like I'm sounding awfully that way myself.
The old person would feel the way they likely already feel, only more so: basically like they are not valued by society and are only being kept alive, and marginally so, due to some kind of weak social conscience. I think having them attended by robots would only emphasize and multiply that.
It seems as though the Metropolis represents a Foucauldian view of the society we presently live in. The worker’s livelihood is directly tied to the livelihood of that which enslaves them, the machine. The city is a monstrous representation of the human made institution, assuming that because the machine relies on human participation, it also must have been initially created by humans.
In Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault explains that humans have become nothing more than “effects” of the institutions they create. Foucault demonstrates this through a historical investigation into what “discipline” and “punishment” meant during the birth of the prison and showing how these meanings have changed over time. Instead of a brisk flogging or branding, people are no longer punished directly for their crimes – for example a sexual offender would be punished by the removal of his or her sex organs. Now, the prison exists merely as an institution of remolding, where people are shaped to fit back into what society has defined as the acceptable citizen.
Foucault goes on to explain that other human-made institutions, such as the hospital, school, economy, and religion also represent this same power relationship. For example, the Canadian beef crisis; the economy is suffering so people are expected to respond to this by eating and supporting Canadian beef. The economy calls so the people answer. Also, the school is primarily a power-knowledge relationship between teacher and student, where the teacher supplies information in which the students are expected to regurgitate back come final time. Similar to the prison, students are monitored (teacher standing at front of class, tests, evaluation etc…) to ensure the molding process is successful.
So, to get back to the Metropolis… the brain of the city (Joh Fredersen who was explained to have conceived the idea to build the machine) represents the guard that stands in the panopticon, monitoring and ensuring the internalization of good behavior among prisoners. He is the leader on the city, or the leader of the institution (prison). The workers represent the prisoners. Therefore, “clearly the machine has made the workers themselves machinelike” because the people have become an effect of the city. So maybe there is not supposed to be a distinction between evil-as-machine and evil-as-woman. Instead, maybe the fact that the worker’s are an effect of something not human is thought to be evil. The head and hands need a mediator, the heart – something that exclusively represents that which is living or natural (maybe). So if the heart represents humanity, or humans as being truly human as opposed to being effects, Metropolis may be proposing that human beings must somehow eliminate the evil without eliminating the machine, because the complete elimination of the machine would throw off the balance of existence.
This balance of existence seems to rely on the balance of nature and machine, assuming that humans (the workers) are natural. So I guess…(if you know where I am going with this, jump in at any time please…) much of this theory relies on the dichotomy of human and nature. Are humans natural? Or are we just a virus, competing with that which is actually natural?
I tried to post this lastnight but it didn't work, so I will retry and hopefully it doesn't pop up twice!
It seems as though the Metropolis represents a Foucauldian view of the society we presently live in. The worker’s livelihood is directly tied to the livelihood of that which enslaves them, the machine. The city is a monstrous representation of the human made institution, assuming that because the machine relies on human participation, it also must have been initially created by humans.
In Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault explains that humans have become nothing more than “effects” of the institutions they create. Foucault demonstrates this through a historical investigation into what “discipline” and “punishment” meant during the birth of the prison and showing how these meanings have changed over time. Instead of a brisk flogging or branding, people are no longer punished directly for their crimes – for example a sexual offender would be punished by the removal of his or her sex organs. Now, the prison exists merely as an institution of remolding, where people are shaped to fit back into what society has defined as the acceptable citizen.
Foucault goes on to explain that other human-made institutions, such as the hospital, school, economy, and religion also represent this same power relationship. For example, the Canadian beef crisis; the economy is suffering so people are expected to respond to this by eating and supporting Canadian beef. The economy calls so the people answer. Also, the school is primarily a power-knowledge relationship between teacher and student, where the teacher supplies information in which the students are expected to regurgitate back come final time. Similar to the prison, students are monitored (teacher standing at front of class, tests, evaluation etc…) to ensure the molding process is successful.
What I am trying to get at is summed up nicely in a quote addressed to Frankenstein from his monstrous creation:
Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself unworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe yourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day will be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your master; - obey!” (p.192)
So, to get back to Metropolis… the brain of the city (Joh Fredersen who was explained to have conceived the idea to build the machine) represents the guard that stands in the panopticon, monitoring and ensuring the internalization of good behavior among prisoners. He is the leader on the city, or the leader of the institution (prison). The workers represent the prisoners. Therefore, “clearly the machine has made the workers themselves machinelike” because the people have become an effect of the city. So maybe there is not supposed to be a distinction between evil-as-machine and evil-as-woman. Instead, maybe the fact that the worker’s are an effect of something not human (both the city and Hel the android) is thought to be evil. The head and hands need a mediator, the heart – something that exclusively represents that which is living or natural (maybe). So if the heart represents humanity, or humans as being truly human as opposed to being effects, Metropolis may be proposing that human beings must somehow eliminate the evil created by the machine without eliminating the machine itself, because the complete elimination of the machine throws off the balance of human survival.
This balance of survival seems to rely on the balance of nature and machine, assuming that humans (the workers) are natural. So I guess…(if you know where I am going with this, jump in at any time please…) much of this theory relies on the dichotomy of human and nature. Are humans natural?
damn it! I really screwed that up. Oh well, if you havent already read the first one, the second one is the revised one. Sorry.
Both Dustin's and Warren's recent comments call attention to the master-slave relationships of humans and their machines (whether the machine is a material object or a social structure such as the economy). Both also call our attention to machines and "caring" --in this conversation, caring for the elderly (what happens when machines do our caring for us?) Does the technology of production/reproduction seems at odds with taking care of the children? Are these texts suggesting the products of our technologies are actually the masters of humanity (technological determinism)?
I agree with dustin that metropolis is rampant with marxist imagery- a true comment on modern society. The images of the owrkers marching LIKE machines into the machines that humans have created, totally devoid of agency or independant thought, which is true in the end when they destroy the machines as they are consumed by a mob mentality... so mindless, our ambitions will enslave us! reminiscent of the "rat-race' that consumes us today.
I also see a correlation between Frankentstein and Metroplis, although my interpretation may vary a bit from Warren's. I feel both works are a comment on our humanity and our tendency to strive towards our own demise in a (seemingly) uncontrollable way. Both texts seem to need the IN-human to show us what it means to BE human... Do they suggest that as we advance scientifically and technologically that we lose touch with our basic humanity... are we doomed to a life of clone babies and Genetically modified food?...
r a n t... anyways, the point i thought i was trying to make is that both texts illuminate the deplorable aspects of human nature... i think... do these blog posts get less embarrassing and less anxiety causing the more you post? Cause, I better get on it then, as i am so tempted to erase this... can i erase it later... after i have posted it?...
I agree with the last post by bumblepanda (I'm sorry, I can't remember your real name, I suck with names) that one of the functions of stories (I think it mentions this somewhere in the readings package on monsters) is to contrast what a society thinks of itself (ie, being human), with what it is striving not to be or what is different from it. Thus, Metropolis is kind of like Brave New World, in that it shows an exaggeration of current social trends (workers slogging it out at shitty jobs, acting like machines themselves - hey, I'd know), control of society by people who are detached from the day-to-day reality of those they rule over, easy manipulation of public opinion by loudmouths with questionable agendas (the man-machine) and so on.
I think Resident Evil: Apocalypse fits here too, in a way; the general populace is ruled by a technocracy that makes decisions that profoundly affect everyone. Though the emphasis is not on machines, it does reflect a fear of those who control technology and what uses those powerful, secretive and largely un-regulated people might have for the powers they hold. Problems seem to arise from that disconnection between the brain and hands; in the context of a corporation I think it's because of the drive for profit, not a particularly humanistic endeavour. Corporation as cyborg/monster? I remembered a quote from a William Gibson story that I thought was very interesting, but I'll put it in a new post, since I don't really think it fits here.
I think warren’s comments about the contribution and repercussions of the robot to an elderly person’s life, is a good one. Human interaction for many of these people has already been greatly diminished, often having lost spouses, friends and other family members. In some cases, their care givers are the people closest to them. Younger generations necessarily have minimal amounts of time (due to career and family obligations) to devote to the elderly. If one was to take away this degree of human contact, what would be the point of going on for them? If you’ve ever taken part in a conversation with someone who’s lonely, you would understand the need, and sometimes desperation, they have to simply have that conversation, even if it’s just about the weather. This happens a lot when working in a doctor’s office. When no one else will listen, people get desperate. They’ll phone to confirm an appointment for the third time, and do everything in their power to keep you on the line. Obviously, human contact has already diminished for many elderly people. It seems to replace what little they have left with a robot would be cruel.
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