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Review - Bicentennial Man
In the last few years, Robin Williams has gone from being one of the funniest movie stars in Hollywood to one of the sappiest, so there is reason to be suspicious of "Bicentennial Man," which was previewed in some theaters across the country this weekend.
The movie is plenty syrupy, but also surprisingly faithful to the Isaac Asimov story that it's based on, and to many of the issues it raised. Like the evolution of artificial-intelligence (AI) machines, questions about whether they can possibly have emotional lives, and their relationship with human beings.
Williams plays a household-appliance robot named Andrew who develops human-like characteristics - friendship, loyalty, humor, creativity, and faces some tough questions as a result? Is he a human or a robot? Are his feelings real, or simply the pre-programmed responses of neural pathways? Is he an appliance or some new form of life? Does he have rights and can he in any way be called human?
Probably the central question, and one Asimov often raised in his wirtings, was how exactly, creations like "The Bicentennial Man" are supposed to live in a culture with enough gee-whiz technology to create them, but that typically hasn't given a though as to how they'll get along in the world.
Andrew is programmed to live forever, at least theoretically, and this puts him in conflict with the life he wants to lead, especially the fact that he feels much more human than robotic, and that everyone he loves grows old, then dies.
Most humans see him as a machine, but spurred by a sympathetic and ethical owner and his daughter, Andrew sets out to hone his evolving skills and - one can see this coming from the first scene - ends up having a lot of heart and wanting a real one (in one hilarious and self-knowing scene, a fellow robot taunts him by singing the "Tin Man" song from the "Wizard of Oz)." Andrew decides that he needs to be free to figure all of this out, and he sets off on a quest to find his place in the world. It's at this point - three-quarters of the way through, that the plot begins to unravel, and stops being even remotely plausible.
The movie is at times gorgeously-shot, and makes innovative use of computer graphics to render cities, hospitals and offices of the future. It also deals sensitively and intelligently with a lot of the issues many suspect are coming, if even only a fraction of the predictions about AI machines come to pass.
Williams can't help but lapsing into the most wide-eyed, saccharine dialogue and character-development.
But this doesn't keep the movie from being surprisingly thoughtful and touching. And prescient, raising issues about technology and the future that hardly anyone in the United States really wants to talk about.
john katz is saving me a lot of time. after a few katzicles, i stopped reading the full article and only skimmed the overview. after this review, i know i can skip those as well.
thanks john!
Just for you info...
Ebert and his co-host gave bicentenial man two thumbs down. They felt the first hour was good and the last hour was too depressing, as all the humans die off. His co-host was saying they over-emphasized the human death part and forgot the whole part in the middle called life, which made it a rotten movie for children.
I'm sure if you just want to see a neat sci-fi idea its probably ok, but I haven't seen the movie myself though. If you disagree with Ebert and his co-host please don't call me stupid. I'm just the messenger.
Having said that, I was surprised at how good the movie turned out. I knew that it wouldn't be true to the original, because I don't expect the mass of moviegoers to understand the three laws and their implications. Take, as an example, my non-geek fiance. She loved this movie. Heck, she cried. I thought she was crying over the romance, and the father/daughter story, but was very surprised when she said that she loved the robot.
d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Hardly anyone wants to talk about!?
Sounds to me like the exact same questions that "Star Trek:The Next Generation" drove into the ground over and over and over.
I just love it when the mainstream finally notices questions that SF-readers have been tossing around for fifty years.
The cake is a pie
Which Asimov short story was this based on?
From the pages of Isaac Asimov came a real company that called itself US Robotics, named after Asimov's US Robotics and Mechanical Men. It's about time we had another movie based on Asimov's work. The man was very nearly the most prolific author of the 20th century, and one of the most underrated. I personally hold over 100 of his books, and that is only a small portion of what he wrote. The man was a genius. Despite the presence of Robin Williams and that annoying little brat from the Pepsi ads, I will go see the movie. No matter what the movie does, it is still Asimov. I will be loyal to Asimov to the very end. Any movie or work that is made based on his stuff, I will feel obliged to check out. Asimov was just that cool. Any person who considers him or her self a sci-fi fan has not earned that title until they have at least read 10 or more Asimov works. If you don't like Asimov, that is your privilege, but do me a favor and stop wasting the free oxygen in my atmosphere.
Windows is going the way of phlogiston...
Being a great fan of Isaac Asimov, I wanted to see that movie.
So I went last Saturday to see it.
I was impressed that the movie was really close to the novel. Often when novel are made into a movie, the substance that make it good just disappear. That was not the case this time.
There were good humor (but it was not hilarous - expect for 1 or 2 scenes) and a lot of sensibility. The questions raised by this movie where that same as is the novel. It make you think about ethics and what make a human being.
There were some error in the movie. In particular even if the 3 laws of robotics are enumerated in the begining, they were violated at some occasions.
I really recommend this movie to any Isaac Asimov fan and everyone else. My wife like that movie very much even if she's neutral abou science-fiction.
They were excellent. Very thought-provoking stuff.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but my expectations are not very high (though it gives me a reason to check out the new THX theatre that just opened up near me).
One, that super-annoying girl from the Pepsi commercials is in it. That's an indication that this is designed to be all cutesy-pie.
Two, Chris Columbus. He did the Home Alone movies. 'Nuff said. Not exactly thought-provoking, or even entertaining, stuff.
Three, Robin Williams. Look at the movies he's done recently, and notice the Mork connection. That's enough for me.
If you're looking for a really good movie right now, I'd recommend Sleepy Hollow. Burton even managed to throw his continuing obsession with gadgets into it. Really cool, and visually amazing.
Well, sure, I suppose, if you refuse to accept the basic premise that toys are actually animate objects that talk and move and feel, then yeah, the plot was absurd... but that doesn't make for a very enjoyable movie, then does it?
Unless, of course, he was referring to some other part of the plot which most every professional reviewer seemed to miss...
Powers&8^]
In this movie the company was NA (North America) Robotics.
Wonder if they couldn't get the rights th the US Robotics name from 3com? Or didn't want to given them free product placement?
This Signature does Not Exist !! FNORD
I think Asimov would have liked it. The film covers the kinds of issues that Asimov brought forward in his robot stories, although there are a few big gaps in the story. For example, what happened to the three laws of robotics? Did Andrew just outgrow them or what?
Still, the film is basically sound. The science is, as always with film, its weakest point. There will not be household robots to do your cooking and cleaning by 2005, but what the hell, this is fiction.
"Robert Burns N6 and ZC series robots and Harley Davidson Paraphenalia" The sign on the shop in San Francisco is the best sight gag in the film.
This is a safe movie - it won't challenge any of your beliefs and it's quite safe to bring children to. The references to sex are few and very tame - there's no real bad language. The view of the future is presented very simply and without real change to society except that neckties look even stupider.
Whatever special effects crew did the robot effects - the masks and/or CGI - deserves an Oscar. It's amazing to see a bulky metal robot that is still clearly and obviously played by Robin Williams, not by some animatronics master or a computer program.
Yet Another Movie That Will Take Months To Get To Europe... I hate it when I read movie reviews on SlashDot for movies that won't be out here in Belgium for months... Why oh why don't these movie people wise up and send those reels earlier ? And don't give me that subtitling/dubbing argument : I understand enough English, thankyouverymuch. They'll beat the 'moviez' crowd that now runs rampant in Europe too.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
The last scene in the movie...
The wife ordering the robot to unplug her... It violates the first law of robotics.... No robot with those three standard laws would of ever unplugged her...
It was perfect, besides that... (but a tad boring and uneventful)...
Look script kiddie (I assume it's your script that's currently spamming Slashdot) by acting this way, you're only going to ruin things for the rest of us.
Eventually, Rob will kill AC access - much the detriment of those ACs that actually post content. Poof! You're gone.
And then if you start spamming with actual IDs, well, then comment posting will get killed for everyone. Poof! No more Slashdot.
My, then you'll have _accomplished_ something, won't you?
And of course, there's always the possibility that Rob could just post a list of all your IP addresses, and turn us loose on you. That'd be fun, wouldn't it?
So do us all a favour, and go away. Nobody cares about you and your kiddie games.
C/mon, Bender is a way more fleshed out character than any of the bots from Asimov. The homage to Charles Dickens and the Santa/Punisher-bot was priceless.
/.-land has thge same feeling to pre-80's Sci-Fi?
On an aside, I tried re-reading some of Asimov's stuff a while back (6 months?), and found it incredibly difficult to get into. I've been finding the same problem with some AC Clarke and Hubbard stuff as well. Just incredibly dated and...hmmm, not sure how to describe it. I;m wondering if this is a post-cyberpunk reaction to pre-cyberpunk writing, in that everything prior has been colored by what has come since.
I;m just curious if anyone else out there in
--sugarman--
i read the book when i was about 9 and i loved it. 12 years later i see the movie based on the book and while it is NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT the same.... it is VERY good. I enjoyed the movie for what it was, and i did not pick it appart for its differences to the book. books are NOT movie, movies are NOT books. unless you are going to see a Michael Chriton (yeah.. i dunno how to spell his name, sue me.) movie, the book will almost ALWAYS be different(better) than the movie. this movie was one of the best science fiction movies i have ever seen. i don't like scifi for the big guns and monsters, i like scifi for the social interactions, and interesting concepts. as it goes i give the book an 8 on a 1-10 scale, and the movie gets a 9 on the same scale.
-joram
Oh yeah, for those of you out there who are not Asimov fans, the name of his fictional company (which appears in very many short stories and novels) was the reason that a certain modem company chose a certain name for themselves.
That freaked me out I realised it when I was ~13.
She was also in "The Insider" and did a bang-up job.
I have a feeling that she's a good actress, and it's just unfortunate that we all know her from the friggin' Pepsi commercials.
(OT)I'm so glad I have a Mute button on the TV remote. That, and those new Gap commercials. Oy..
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
... before *not* recommending it. Thinking that the Pepsi girl is annoying (aside from being a bit mean spirited) is not a good nor intelligent reason to see a movie.
BTW - I also saw Sleepy Hollow. I think Bicentenial man is a much, much better film. It might have tried to make you cry to hard, but it had a decent story and a lot of thought proviking ideas.
Sleepy Hollow was a mess. After the third beheading I was hoping the hero would be the next victim, usually not a good sign. Oh, and the scenes with the horseman with his head on !!! ARGH ! Was he on drugs or what ?
- sigs are for wimps.
Just because it's likely to be a big part of this discussion I'll mention Asimov's 3 laws of robotics.
Asimov's robot books dealt a lot with these laws and the conflicts arising from them. His primitive robots had trouble understanding the subtleties of the laws and dealing with the problems when the laws conflicted. The more advanced robots knew how to weigh the importance of the order. For example, for a robot to destroy itself, the order to do so would have to be very forceful otherwise the third law would prevent it.
Anyhow, I loved all Asimov's books, esp. his robot novels and highly recommend them to anyone who likes *good* sci-fi, detective stories, and deep thinking about what it means to be human/alive/sentient. I doubt this movie lives up to the amazing quality of his books, but maybe it will at least be a way to introduce people who wouldn't otherwise read an Asimov book to his work.
That's odd... I just moderated this down, and then I did post a comment in this thread so my moderation was undone. But the 'troll' rating stuck ! I think I found YASB (Yet Another Slashdot Bug). Or is it a feature ;-)
:-), and the metamoderators won't even get to review it. I think... oh well.
Possibility : downmoderate a +5 interesting post to +4 troll, then comment in the thread. Result : +5 troll
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True to the vision? I'm not so sure...
First off, before going any further, let me state that Bicentennial Man is a pretty damn good movie and an excellent example of sci-fi effects-laden blockbuster without a single gun or explosion I can remember. That part -- Asimov's trait of writing "humans being, not humans doing" -- is remarkably intact for a movie coming out of Hollywood.
The original story itself (and the lengthier
collaborative version "The Positronic Man" with Robert Silverberg that the movie is based on) deals with humanity on several levels; the emotional, as seen in the movie, and the social, which is just barely touched on, mostly during the last act of the movie. The original dealt at length with the legal and social ramifications
of a machine joining society (the infamous scene
where two men command Andrew to dismantle himself
on a roadside springs immediately to mind) which
are excised completely from the story, leaving
basically a huge tear-jerker of a film. I left
ever-so-slightly disappointed at the fact that
Asimov's excellent fable had been mutated a little
too close to its Pinocchio origin. I wanted more depth, I'm afraid.
Nevertheless, this is an excellent film with
very subtle and interesting special effects. My med-student fiancee couldn't stifle an "oh, COOL!"
during one scene with closeups of artificial
organs...
In short, see this movie, read the book.
d.
I haven't seen Bicentennial Man, so I'm probably going to put my foot in my mouth, but what I object to about the premise of this movie (and also with the similar quest of Data in Star Trek TNG) is the sheer arrogance of the notion that robots and cyborgs would want to become human!
:) What will humans do when confronted by irrefutable evidence that they are not special.
:)
This is a very common theme in Sci-Fi. Man creates robots. Robots develop self awareness, introspection, and thought. Robots (for some reason) lack "emotion" and "sensation". Robot seeks to become more human.
In my mind this is insufferable anthrocentrism. Humans, completely without proof, cling to the idea that they are unique and special in some vague and undefinable way. Even as we push the boundaries of self-definition through such methods as philosophy, natural science, and hi-tech, we continue to relish a feeling of superiority over the rest of the universe, that, as far as I can tell, is completely foundless in any empirical fact.
Mark my words: some day there will be programs that can write stories as well as humans. Programs that can put that delicate twist on Chopin as well has humans. Programs that can paint marvellous painting that express deep meaning as well as humans. You know this is true - we already have mechanisms that can translate like a third-grader and write stories like a fourth-grader. How much longer can it be before our marvellous intellects are mimicked by an algorithm.
I adhere in some ways to the Behaviorist notion that what matters about intelligence is a) what goes into the machine and b) what comes out. There is nothing else. If you feel that there is more going on inside you than what can be summarized by your external stimuli and your external reactions, then you are mistaken. You are only observing an internalized output to external stimuli. The feedback you would normally express in the outside world is instead being piped directly to your brain's input valve.
Please tell me why machines cannot do this.
Sooner or later we will be confronted by the fact that everything we do is completely replicable, from the works of great geniuses to the droolings of cretins. (Hey - we already have the latter down
My guess is, they will ignore it. They will continue to posit superiority over their made mechanisms, even if those mechanisms can produce beauty and song superior to those of the most spiritual human. We're like that - intolerably arrogant and blind.
So, remind me again why a self-aware machine would crave to be human?
Ok, that's my rant. Now I have to get some real work done
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I was really impressed with the movie. Visually, dramatically, even as far as writing goes it was good. And a lot closer to the original than Starship Troopers. Light years. Especially considering it was an idea, not the F/X the film wanted to convey. It would make a great date movie provided your date doesn't own a copy of any "Nitpickers' Guide." Unfortunately, it's been years since I read the original so I cannot comment on it's "truthfulness" to the original as far as details but it almost captured the essense of humanity and independence I got from the original. Consider where it's coming from. Don't be a grinch. It's a good movie. Just not for big brains or speculative-fiction elitists.
If what I said is nonsense,
I'm making a point with it.
If what I said makes perfect sense,
you obviously missed the point.
I counted three (maybe four) violations of the Three Laws:
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
I totally agree about trying to read pre-80's Sci-Fi. One Clarke novel that I still love is The Fountains of Paradise, largely because of the setting, Sri Lanka. But many of his other books seem almost quaint.
Asimov I find amazingly dated in such a short amount of time--the Foundation series reads like cold war propaganda (Although I have yet to read the new ones, by Greg Bear, Gregory Benford and I think Ben Bov).
On, the other hand, many Phillip K. Dick's books I've reread several times: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, and The Divine Invasion to name a few. Dick also did many cold war influenced books, but within them were insights and speculations that are still relevant.
This all leads me to wonder how long before Gibson seems dated (If not already?).
On a side note, Greg Bears's new book, Darwin's Radio is an interesting look at evolution and bioethics, definitely worth a read.
Well, I'll admit that Asimov is really dry but fascinating once you start rolling on it. Clarke is way too prejudiced once you read about a dozen of his things. (Even so, 3001 is a good read, especially the part in the forward or afterword where Clarke says "I thought of it first!" It's priceless. I wonder if he knows he's become a charicature of himself?) You see it like the sun in the noonday sky. Read Heinlein. Now that's cool, if sometimes weird, stuff. I find the trouble with CP stuff is that the authors sometimes get too wrapped up in the "en nui" of the genre. They lose their own humanity in the writing and it's hard to relate to any characters or ideas or anything because it just doesn't matter. Oh, and Dune. That's a great read if difficult to pick up, but not nearly so hard as Robots or Foundation. A lot harder to put down though.
If what I said is nonsense,
I'm making a point with it.
If what I said makes perfect sense,
you obviously missed the point.
Speaking of stupidity, posting in caps only demonstrates your extremely low IQ.
Why not go haunt lusenet instead? Or how about some lamer IRC channel? There are plenty of mono-browed genetic throwbacks on IRC that would love your company. Just think, you can start your OWN channel and flood it to your heart's content!
Better yet, why not go suck on an exhaust pipe for a few hours? Do us all a favour.
Have you considered going into government service?
Strike while the irony is hot! -- The Freethinker
And can we PLEASE get someone to edit his articles for punctuation and typographical errors? It shouldn't be that hard...
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I see, so you are 1E3T because you wasted the effort to manually spam Slashdot. Wonderful, glad I got that cleared up. Do us all a favor and go do something truly constructive. I'm sure the only stupidity you're showing Rob and the rest is your own. Please air your childishness elsewhere. Danke.
"Computer animation is becoming an art form of its own"? Computer animation has been its own art form since Fantasia, or even before.
Of course I guess this doesn't bug me quite as much as his technocratic dogmatism, which is for the most part thankfully absent from this piece.
BBB
Of course the faithful Robots Daneel and Giskard did eventually come up with the zeroth law which was something along the lines of the following, with the other laws amended accordingly:
0: A robot should harm or allow to come to harm through inaction humanity.
Of course Giskard had a nervous breakdown and died as a result of this though.... but Daneel went onto guide human kind to the stars. (We only find out how this ends with Foundation and Earth)
This was a bit of a leap for robot stories becuase it suggested a leap that had not really been seen in the books. Robot spontanously developing morals.
Where there any more rule added by others? In other contexts. I know that in Lost Little Robot the first was weakended.
Ah, here we see another prime example of tab damage at it's worst. And look...we may just have to place a call to Captain Whitespace for all the whitespace that got wasted in this post. And what? No quote from Neil Peart? For shame.
Still, we can make out some of the basic features...the bottom portion is obviously to show how 'leet the poster is. Bart Simpson's head is plainly visible, true to Usenet standards. The excessive use of 'leet speek is really just a digital pheremone...the poster is obviously in the mating season, trying to attract a mate of similar talents.
However, sadly, this BUAG falls flat on it's face for it's glaring ommision of the continent of Australia, with the required identification of the city of Perth.
Overall, I give it a 2/10. Better luck next time.
Sorry, Jon, but BM was a five-minute Hallmark card stretched out into 2+ hours. I have a lot of patience for cheese and heartstring-plucking movies, but this was the most deliberate yet boring movie I've seen in a while.
The portrayal of the human characters was so boring and non-challenging that I honestly wondered in the middle of the movie why Robin Williams wanted to be human at all. Existence as a robot seemed much more exciting than these people's lives. The little Pepsi girl was more annoying than the female robot with the personality chip, who bugged the hell out of me.
Sure, the computer-generated backgrounds of San Francisco and other cities were quite purty. But I didn't come to this movie for the special effects - we're all becoming more immune to effects-driven movies now - I came to see a study of technology and humanity, the pervasive theme behind most of Asimov's work.
Instead I left covered in cheese - and I checked, it wasn't spillage from my nachos.
I adhere in some ways to the Behaviorist notion that what matters about intelligence is a) what goes into the machine and b) what comes out. There is nothing else. If you feel that there is more going on inside you than what can be summarized by your external stimuli and your external reactions, then you are mistaken. You are only observing an internalized output to external stimuli. The feedback you would normally express in the outside world is instead being piped directly to your brain's input valve.
There are serious problems with behaviourism.
First of all, if behaviourism were true, we could teach pigs to sing. We can't. There are built-in functions in the brain that make a difference in intelligence.
Second, human children learn language in a fashion which behaviourism can't account for. Children will learn whatever language they are exposed to. They learn the rules of their language without ever understanding them as rules. They do not make the type of mistakes a trial-and-error behaviour renforcement model would require of them. They always group words into structures, even in highly inflected languages and even when they get the fine points of syntax wrong. Furthermore (and most damningly) a human child can become fully functional in a foreign language in under a year, while few adults can do so under any circumstances. The most parsimonious theory that includes these facts is that humans, like other animals, have biological mechanisms in the brain that enable them to do these things.
Thirdly, there are growing bodies of evidence that large areas of human behaviour are biologically influenced. Several forms of psychiatric disease can be clearly traced to biochemical roots. Human sexual behaviour has clear biological roots (I doubt anyone would much bother with sex if their brains didn't force them too.) Even areas like anti-social behaviour are increasingly believed to have partially biological origins, possibly hereditary ones.
That means that humans are not tabula rasa as the behaviourists believed. What goes on in our brains is not a simple function of external stimula.
Now, that does not mean it isn't possible to understand these parts of the brain and program computers to emulate them effectively, but if we do so, we are emulating a human, not creating a truly new machine intelligence.
I can easily imagine a machine pretending to be human wanting to become fully human. Such a machine would likely have emotional states, since we are unlikely to be able to separate these genuinely human conditions from an abstract intelligence. We don't even have a good definition of intelligence, and even if we fully understood the biology and functioning of the brain, we are unlikely to be able to discuss intelligence apart from it's structural framework.
An AI that thinks like a human is likely to want the range of experience and the level of autonomy that humans enjoy. It's not implausible that it would want to be seen and treated as an equal to humans. It is conceivable that it would view itself as superior, but I find it hard to believe that any probable AI would wish to reject the ensemble of human experience in the way you suggest.
robably the central question, and one Asimov often raised in his wirtings, was how exactly, creations like "The Bicentennial Man" are supposed to live in a culture with enough gee-whiz technology to
create
them, but that typically hasn't given a though as to how they'll get along in the world.
i myself had.hearty good laugh over the fact of katz in his katz way. with his two dogs. sitting by his fireplace unable to spell because he can't look he can't he is well respected and he cannot spell nor can he proofread.
he's a total fucking moron and yet he posts here.
i can see rob malda sitting in his den with a ten-million-dollar-or-so pile of cash and giggling with his smug, irritating face while talking to esr on irc.
heheheheheheh we're rich heheheheheheheheheheh.
heheh.
i despise you.
Slashdot is a community, and in a community, there are standards of behavior that are created and enforced. The restrictions on posting are there because we, the community, would rather be subject to rating and moderation than have to read many hundreds of lame, pointless posts like yours.
Your suggestion that you're plastering your crap all over this discussion in order to "SHOW ROB AND THE REST OF THE GANG THEIR STUPIDITY" and "[show] WHAT A POS THE SYSTEM IS" is complete bunk. This is like a vandal smashing windows to demonstrate the fact that the police cannot stop every crime - true, but it's a rationalization for juvenile behavior that completely lacks a logical backing.
If you want to be a part of this community, you're going to have to follow its rules voluntarily - this is why the Slashdot community works, and this is why society works; most people follow the rules despite the fact that they know that the rules may not get enforced.
You suggest the system is broken. That comes from the premise that the system should be able to stop any type of lameness that comes into it, and that's a completely wrong interpretation of what the moderation system is there for. The problem isn't the (very well-thought-out) technology that Rob et al have given us to rate one another, it's the hostile element which doesn't want to contribute, the people who just want to force their immature ranting onto everyone else.
You aren't pointing out what's wrong with the system in your post. You are what's wrong with the system.
I think you missed a "not" in your Zeroth Law. Basically, robots must protect /humanity/ above protecting individual humans. (Although I can't find a list of Robot novels, so I don't know which ones to read to discover this.)
Roger Allen McBride has couple of really poorly-written novels that rip up the Three Laws, point out their problems and their resulting effects on humanity (!), and then proceed to create four New Laws.
The actual examination of the Three Laws is really well done, but unfortunately it's the only good piece of writing in the novels.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Our obnoxious little friends are trying to make a point.
The only speech worth having is free speech. One of the great things about slashdot was how everybody's voice was heard. The current caste system in place has some rather undesirable side effects that run counter to this.
The real problem has always been idiots like you who insist on feeding the trolls. That and the morons who insist on posting nearly the exact thing as everyone else. Read the comments. If you have something new to add, then post it. Otherwise STFU and the signal to noise ratio will improve dramatically.
----Disregard All Comments Above this Line----
Just want to post a note to everyone to not waste the 3.5 hours or so reading the 'novel.'
Remember when you were in 6th grade and had to do a report on bats or something? You took the encyclopedia entry and stretched it to 2 pages or some such... The 'novel' is exactly the same thing. Silverberg just inserted words into the story and added at most 2 scenes. A complete waste of effort. They had to use large print and thick paper to get the 'novel' to look like a whole book.
Just read the original story and if you're a CGI fan, go see the movie. But avoid the 'novel' at all costs.
Minor correction:
In my copy of the book (and all the short stories), it was U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men. Not "robotics"..
However, Asimov is credited for inventing the term "robotics" when he used it for the first time in a short story back in the 30's (40's?). Of course, he thought the word already existed, and didn't realize that he'd made it up.
Another thing in the book that may not have made it to the movie: world government. The world was divided into dictorates, and the book mainly occured in the North American Dictorate, as I recall.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
This is the kind of nonsense that -1 is for. If I could just block out this kind of flooding, I'd be happy to just lower my threshold and let the moderators take care of it (assuming they have enough points, which looks to be a bit of a problem in this case).
Unfortunately, interesting posts like those from grits boy, the naked and petrified troll, and other totally irrelevant comedy posts would be filtered as well. So, I surf at -1 and put up with it.
It would be cool if there was some way to ditch the blatently redundant flooding, but still be able to read the oddballs. I don't even mind reading first posts, as they're kind of a Slashdot tradition of sorts. A selective filter based on moderation category would be way cool, assuming the moderators were trustworthy. Also, maybe add another reason for marking down. Call it "flooding" situations specificly such as what we have here.
Well, now that I've added to wasted bandwidth, I think I'll quit. Carry on.
Okay, I decided to scroll down to the bottom of this post, and saw the "Moderation Slurp" going on..
That's it. It's over folks. I swore I never would do it, but from now on I read at 1 and up.
Goodbye Anonymous Cowards, we hardly knew ye..
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
As I understood it, the robots didn't obey a set of black-and-white rules. Rather, the instructions guiding them were incredibly intricate and deeply ingrained within them. A robot may not harm a human being, but if a human orders a robot forcefully enough, a robot could probably be instructed to cause a very mild amount of pain, or to place a human being in a situation of slightly more risk of harm than the robot would otherwise permit. Likewise, a trivial instruction that a robot kill itself could probably be ignored.
In these situations, the robot would probably be under a bit of duress, but the point is that these situations tend to be represented as *potentials*, or "voltage levels", if you will. "Acceptable risk" is an acceptable synonym, in my opinion. Without this ability, I agree, robots obeying these laws would probably be useless.
A robot would theoretically be capable of a tremendous amount of observation and prediction. If a human were to run and jump out in front of a car driven by a robot, the robot would either be able to see this and prevent it, or there would be nothing he could do about it. A sufficiently advanced robot would survive either way. Since (in the Asimov world), most (all?) cars were driven by robots, and the robots could communicate between each other, it's easy to see that the act of navigating by car was relatively safe. Pedestrians alongside the road are another matter, but you're right -- a robot wouldn't do it if there was such a large chance of harming a human being. The logical conclusion is that the robots didn't see such a chance for harm, or if there were a small chance, the potential introduced by orders from the 2nd law would override the 1st law concern (but only to a point).
Is that the robots took those laws and postulated the Zeroth Law (which is, essentially, that robots are more responsible for protecting HUMANITY than they are any one person)... and then humanity was ultimately enslaved by robots, for a time.
The idea being "I have to protect you, whether you like it or not, and controlling you is the most efficient way to do it."
At least, that's what the later Foundation books seems to suggest. That's why robots are illegal in the Galactic Empire and post-Galactic Empire...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I don't think I can deal with it. IMHO Isaac Asimov was to SF what Robin Williams is to acting (and it ain't good, if yer wondering). Oh, well.
This concentrated abuse of Slashdot is FUN? What else do you do for kicks, big boy? Beat up little children? Shoplift? Perhaps key a few cars? Piss on passed-out winos? "Whoooo-ee! Lookee here Jim-Bob! I done posted a whole bunch of crap on this here internet thingy and pissed me off a whole bunch of nerdy folks! Heee-haw, ain't this fun!" Do you get any idea of just how contemptable you are? Go away. We don't care about your "point". So the system can be abused? No kidding. The grown-ups amongst us understand that, and choose not to abuse the system. Go away.
personally i havent seen the movie yet. it did look quite hilarious and i was planning on seeing it. Since I've heard such wonderful reviews of it and am a Robin Williams fan, I guess I'll go take on of my girlfriends to go see it sometime.
There were plenty of references to Asimov with respects to Data in Star Trek. The whole idea of a *positronic* brain came straight from Asimov. It kinda sounds like you want to say "Data came first" when really, the story this movie is based on is much older than Star Trek. :)
Hey Rob!
Here's a chance to drive home to these losers that their actions have repercussions - you have this guy's IP address. He's confessed that he's out to ruin Slashdot.
Post his IP - and the IPs of everyone else trolling this thread. Let us at him. Perhaps we'll get ahold of his school/job and let them know what he's been up to. Maybe some of us can go find him in RL and explain to him, up close and personal, that we don't appreciate his actions here.
The AC thing is great - I always post as an AC, on general principles - but only when the ACs agree to play by the rules. When they start abusing the system like this for their own ends, they have rejected their right to be anonymous.
Let us know who they are Rob - we'll handle the rest.
Oh that's right, _I'm_ the idiot. Yeah, and the guy that flooded the entire base with stupidity should just walk free..."ignore him and he'll just go away"...uh-huh, that's worked WONDERS on slashdot so far.
I guess I'm just a fool for expecting any kind of common sense from the locker room of Slashdot.org.
This moronic spammer does not speak for me, and I doubt very much that he speaks for naked'n'petrified or open source natalie portman. I am morally certain that he doesn't speak for 70% (the Plausible Right-Wing Troll), either. We've discussed idiots like this, and it's a pisser because it's a damned abuse. One troll (preferably entertaining) in a discussion will get moderated down to -1 and it won't bother anybody who doesn't choose to have a low threshold. We can all live with that, but this is different. For fuck's sake, it's not even funny. All it does is give the real trolls a bad name. I refuse to do anything the moderation system can't cope with, just as a matter of simple decency.
This guy is just some random jackass with no sense of humor.
Regards,
80 Million Dead
Or check the card catalog of your local libraries.
this kinda trash doesn't take points to get rid of. I send the page to the slashdot team, they delete it w/o using up my moderator points. they'll also probably check the IP logs and see that yet another script kiddie needs to have his ISP revoke his access.
read the 'moderator how to' to see exactly what moderators do, kid.
Ok, I haven't seen the movie or read the book (though I've read and enjoyed many Asimovs in the past) but it seems to me quite unlikely we'll have any high-tech machines any time in the near future that regularly outlive us. How old is that machine on your desktop? Your car? Your household appliances? The only significant artificial object you frequently associate with that is likely to be older than you is your house/apartment, and even that is not a given. Humans have been dwelling in houses for thousands of years, and we still build so many new ones each year, and tear down the old. My guess is it'll be a thousand years or more before robot design stabilizes to the point where models a hundred years old are not obsolete, and by then us humans will probably be living a lot longer too.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Gasp. Another Williams vehicle that aims only to warm your heart and ignore your brain. Like its competitor The Green Mile this movie begs for Oscar attention with its brain numbing simplicity. Remember when Robin Williams was cutting edge? Remember when he was funny? Yeah, neither can I.
What's this KatzSpeak about computer animation becoming an artform of its own? That would be nice if it was viewed as fine art, but its mostly used for movies which are about as far as you can get from fine art. Snazzy animation has replaced the only thing worthwhile in SciFi - the story. I've seen bubblegum anime with stronger plots than most big budget sci-fi flicks. Great graphics in the hands of today's filmmakers has more or less ruined the genre. I say they rename Sci-Fi Com-Ani and be done with it.
Even if "", it had the cities and everything looking just as we all thought it would in the year 2000. Remember when we was kids, and we all thought the year 2000 was going be like? I think they was trying to get that point, and not try to be so "right on" grin. Anyways, i loved it, great movie!!! JonKatz! Man you rule, and *GEEKS* is awesome!!! Brian Heckathorne brian@quikserv.net
I enjoy a lot of the comments in slashdot. Its reading posts like yours that tempt me to increase my threshold at 1.
Perhaps you should take slashdot less seriously, go out, get some fresh air, and concentrate your efforts on things that really matter?
Man oh man, this burns my ass.
The right to free speech does NOT give you the right to say anything you want, anywhere you want. What it gives you is the right to speak an opinion and NOT BE IMPRISONED FOR THE IDEAS YOU EXPRESS.
If you get a bullhorn, and you go to a residential area, and at 2:00AM start preaching to the world about whatever it is you feel like preaching about at 120Db, you will be arrested and silenced. Not because of your opinions, but because you were disturbing the peace.
That's not a case of free speech - that's a case of bad manners. The community has a right to silence those who act contrary to the wishes of society.
Silencing the trolls is NOT CENSORSHIP, it's keeping the peace. That's a Good Thing.
That these idiots can't tell the difference between "I can express whatever view I wish without fear of imprisonment" and "I wanna say whatever I want whenever I want no matter what it does to anyone else" more shows their ignorence.
These are spoiled, pathetic little brats, not edgy, savvy proponents of online free speech. They deserve to be silenced.
1. Yeah, it probably isn't a kids' movie really. Maybe the first hour or so. But when Sir and Little Miss die, it's too much to be a kids movie. I think the commercials are giving the wrong impression. I thought it was more of a kids movie from the commercials. If they had been more "accurate," it might have been a different story.
2. Something Ebert mentioned, and I agreed with, was that the passage of time was a little off. When the first period of time passes, Little Miss looks like she's in her late 20's. Maybe older. Meanwhile, they say that they've had Andrew for 15 years? And she couldn't have been much older than 7 or 8 in the first part of the movie. Then, when Portia first appears, how much time had passed? I don't know how realistic it was for Little Miss to suddenly have a granddaughter that was probably near 30. Before Andrew takes off on his journey, Lloyd had just passed the Bar. Now he has a daughter? Supposedly, it had been 20 years. Add on a few more, maybe it's been 25. But still.... Ebert *did* have a good point with this one.
3. The movie did seem to drag a bit. An hour in, I thought it was almost over. But then it kept going.
Just my two cents.
This was a movie. It had some special effects, was based on a book and raised some issues. Robin Williams was in it.
C'mon, admit that all you've seen is the trailer.
*smirking*
-nme!
No, he's right. These kiddies are becoming a serious pain in the ass.
I really like the idea of posting IP addresses for people who are obviously abusing the site. Perhaps the meta-moderators could do this? I mean the Andover employee types. Keep an eye on the trolls, and if one pops up a little too often, post his IP, and let the community sort them out.
...you'd think as a professional writer, you'd know the difference between "its" the possessive and "it's" the contraction:
On behalf of all the English majors of the world, I curse you! May your navel lint spontaneously combust! May your leg become the love object of an unwashed doberman! May you decapitate yourself in a freak shaving accident! May a rotund Harley momma smother you in her bathykolpian charms! Bad, naughty, evil Katz! No cookie for you!
*ahem* Sorry 'bout that, I kinda lost my head there. I now return you to your regularly scheduled rant....
-- The ever-presence Anonymous Coward
I didn't finally pick up the book until a few years ago. The funny thing is that the story starts out in early June of 1994 (or was it 96?), and I was reading it just a couple days off from that very date... Freaky, huh? Ok, maybe not THAT freaky, but still a little freakish...
I just have one question, why is this movie/book called Bicentennial Man? Is he the result of 200 years of robot-making, or was the book written long enough ago that people assumed that we would have household robots by 1976?
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
1) I will not write or say anything that is detrimental to Isac Asimov.
2) I must obey my interpretation of Isac Asimov, gleaned from all eleven of his books I read.
3) I will not allow anything detrimental to Isac Asimov to be said.
For beter laughs than a robot like me could generate, visit I Rowboat
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
1) I will not write or say anything that is detrimental to Isac Asimov.
2) I must obey my interpretation of Isac Asimov, gleaned from all eleven of his books I read.
3) I will not allow anything detrimental to Isac Asimov to be said.
For beter laughs than a robot like me could generate, visit I Rowboat
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
People like you are the reason I have negative karma. I get pissed at seeing all this bullshit sprayed around throughout what is supposed to be an intelligent conversation. So I tell people like you to fuck off, in fact I'm doing it now. Being moderated down is a small price to pay to tell someone to eat shit and die when they really should.
"Reality is less than television."-Brian Oblivion
Keep an eye on the trolls, and if one pops up a little too often,
. . . but if shit like this continues, I'd actually be in favor of it. And I'm a damn troll, for Christ's sake!
Right now AFAIK, there's a temporary abusive-poster ban on anyone who gets -1'd five times in some period of time (24 hours?), but that's no good against some asshole who posts twenty times in a couple of minutes. By the time the five -1's are in, he's already been and gone.
This is just disgusting. I really don't think there's any technical solution for it. Hopefully the moron responsible will get bored and go back to masturbating in front of Happy Days reruns or whatever people like that do with their time. He probably will. It takes effort to be that much of an idiot, and idiots usually don't have a long attention span. If not, if this gets to be a consistent thing, well, dammit . . . posting IP's seems like a terribly Draconian solution . . . It's not my call, of course, it's Malda's call.
80 Million Dead
You've forgotten that this is slashdot.org, not lart.com.
/. staff are interested in the rights of speech, privacy, & the security of data,
/. will probably have to initialt a series of votes on the matter, readers & contributors included.
By enocuraging Rob to condone vigilante behaviour, he & the rest of his staff are no better than the jackasses out there. This is all the more ironic when you consider:
1)the
2)as part of Andover (which has prepared its stock offering), the thought of dragging out the less savory posters for a good kicking hardly fares well for the majority of Andover's future shareholders, not to mention the Securities & Exchange suits & the FTC.
As a community,
I get it, probably more than you do. You have a problem with TRUST. You think that Slashdot doesnt trust you enough not to troll, so therefore you troll. Treat people like children and they will act accordingly, no matter what their age. One of the great things about slashdot is the degree of trust that rob et al give to the users. The very fact that you are able to post at all is indicitave of that level of trust. Slashdot is treating you like the adult that you either are, or hope to be someday. If you are not worthy of that trust, then shame on you. How many people who read slashdot could do a lot more damage to the whole system than just posting drivel? Yet slashdot still exists, its not cracked on a regular basis. Part of this is due to security measures that andover.net implements, security measures that are needed because there are peopl out there who are unworthy of trust, who are unworthy of being treated as adults. Therefore, some minimal security sytem is put in place. No security system is perfect though, and I am certain that there are many slashdot readers who could poke giant holes in it. They dont though. Why? Because there is a social contract in place, like some other posters to this thread have said, slashdot is a community, and as a community,there has to be a social contract. People agree not to kill each other, not to spam each other, not to post off topic (like I am right now, which is why im going AC). It is only when people from outside the community enter, people who are unaware of the rules, unwritten or otherwise, that problems start to emerge. I support the moderation system 100%, if only because it allows me to see what posts the community deems as intelligent, well thought out articles, and what articles are not so intelligent. If you dont like the way the system works, then dont use it. There are pelnty of other sites out there that you can go to. If you see something genuinely wrong with the system, and you care enough about he community to change it, write to Rob with your ideas. If they are good, I have no doubt that he will use them, and even if they arent useful, he'll probably tell you why. As for your threat
AND IF ANY DAMAGE IS DONE I WILL SUE HIS ASS FOR IT, AND IN THIS COUNTRY, YOU KNOW ID' WIN.
I dont think you would win, if you violate the system and face retribution for that violation, thats perfectly legal, its what our government and laws are based on. Now, if you did not violate the system, and were punished, I could see your suit winning. Nothing you have done so far however, except for the two posts where you actually said something, was within the rules. If you dont like a system of government ( which is what slashdot is becoming) either work within it to change it, or get out.
-Cybercuzco
An interesting play dealing with some of the Frankenstein issues of the Robots taking over the world. The "robots" are not mechanical, but biological and can not be easily distinguished from humans.
http://www.uwec.edu/academic/curric /jerzdg/RUR/ for more info
Excuse me but I find your comment both bigoted and repressive. Yet another example of "The Man" sticking it to the proletariat. Stand up and put an end to the shrill bleeting of shameful racist stools of society. Just say no to anonymous misanthropy, DARE to put an end to the fleshy wound that posts YAFFRBMS. So next time why don't you buy yourself an opinion to post so you don't have "dim any light-bulbs" trying to think of something remotely witty to share with the rest of us.
No, Andover shouldn't post the IPs of the abusers -- that'd be too much like encouraging vigilanteism. What they should do is simply make the spammers' ISPs aware of their abuses, and chances are good the abusers will soon be gone.
-- WhiskeyJack
by having L. Ron and Arthur C. in the same sentence?
Andover shouldn't post the IPs of the abusers -- that'd be too much like encouraging vigilanteism. What they should do is simply make the spammers' ISPs aware of their abuses
Agreed. Of course everybody can get another ISP account, but it gets tiring. And if they're posting from work (as I do), they'll hopefully have some explaining to do. I doubt that this kid is in a position to laugh it off with his boss. More likely he's in school, and they'll just yank his account without asking any questions.
--80md
It is definately true that one can map any consistent function's output to its input by trying them all out, and knowing such mapping is equivalent to knowing the function. Aside from noting that it is quite difficuult to do this even for continuous valued non-trivial functions, that it is much harder to do for such a complex function as the human being, we need to change the wording.
Behaviorism, as other posters have pointed out has special meaning in pshychology. What one mean to say is that we want to see empirical evidence that robots have "emotions" and "sensations." Thus far, the best standard for testing things like emotions, intelligence, etc. is the human being--Thus the Turing test.
Empirically, if we observe same behavior comming out of a 'bot as a human, we would say that yes the bot is same as human.
Self-aware machines crave to be humans because humans are not willing to give up any thing that is part of "being human." Creating a robot is to make it do things better than we can. But often, the sci-fi writers find that the most perfect being is still the human being, even given its many flaws.
Keep in mind, that Asmov was the one who coined the phrase "ROBOT," and "ROBOTICS." He is the first one to seriously think about these issues. Data Fron ST:TNG is in many part drived from Asmovian robots. most notably the positronic brain, and the quest for humanity.
I think its best to see what they are trying to say, much less what they are saying. The best "sci-fi"'s are not categorized as "fantasy" because they really deal with reality under a magnifying glass.
my $.02
Maybe some of us can go find him in RL and explain to him, up close and personal, that we don't appreciate his actions here.
That way, there's no danger of Rob ever releasing IP's of shitheads like our little spammer here. What if some goon like you did go kick the kid's ass? Rob might be held partly liable. Uhh, nope. Not gonna happen.
Hopefully, Rob can find some way to deal with losers like the spammer without violating anybody's privacy or opening anybody up to potential violence.
quit feeding the troll, genius.
1) Rodger Ebert loves new and original movies, i.e. he loved Pulp Fiction, Being John Malkovich. 2) There are lots of artsy movies he reviewed and didn't like. Do you even read his reviews? 3) He bases movies on how fun they are to watch. Most critics panned Speed 2. He said he goes to movies to see things he's never seen before, and he never saw a giant boat crashing into a dock. It was entertaining, he gave it three stars. I have much respect for the fat old man!
Specifically, they - although they're supposed to be encoded at the lowest level of the robot's "positronic brain" - are stated in terms of high-level concepts; "human", "harm", "orders", "inaction", "protection", "conflict" and so forth. (Needless to say, Asimov himself was quite aware of this, and all of his Robot stories involve juggling the exact definition and application of these concepts.)
When the 3 laws were first written out - in the early 50's AFAIK - the prevailing view of consciousness, the mind, and AI was upside-down from what we think today. Namely, concepts, analogies and calculations were supposed to be low-level "intelligence" operations, and robotic (or human) consciousness was built with these as building blocks.
Instead, today we view consciousness, concepts, analogies and even mental calculations as an emergent property of a great number of low-level functions which seem to be simple feedback loops, pleasure/pain learning circuits, perceptual functions, and what linguist George Lakoff calls "conceptual metaphors". One of the points to the modern view is that, probably, an AI would have to be taught to do mental calculations, and probably would do them with same speed (and the same accuracy) as a human.
So, when practical robots come about, they'll be built on physical metaphors, basic learning circuits, and will have to "learn" the equivalent of the 3 laws once they can grasp the abstract concepts involved - and they'll probably want to argue a lot about the implications.
Silencing the trolls is NOT CENSORSHIP, it's keeping the peace.
Rob Malda has the right to silence the trolls, if he chooses, because he owns the servers. It's his site, and he's not obliged to donate free bandwidth to all of us out here in userland. If he chooses to do so, that's great, but the First Amendment doesn't enter into it at all. In fact, you could argue that the "freedom . . . of the press" mentioned in the First Amendment includes letting the press not print things they don't want to print. In other words, the First Amendment could very easily be seen to protect Rob's right to delete your post and mine if he damn well feels like it. Fortunately he doesn't.
This is not a "community" in the sense that your town is a "community". We're on private property here.
The community has a right to silence those who act contrary to the wishes of society.
That depends on what the wishes are, and on the context. The First Amendment exists specifically to protect speech which offends people. That is the only kind of speech which needs protection. The whole point is that a free society tolerates dissent and disagreement. It need not tolerate a bullhorn at 2:00 AM (though for some fucking reason it tolerates car alarms at 2:00 AM -- ever wonder about that?), but just invoking that example doesn't make it a valid analogy to whatever it is you're all hot and bothered about banning.
Here's another example: You can't just say "we wish that you don't write 'fuck' on your jacket", and then enforce that. Some miserable city tried it and the Supreme Court told them to piss off, and rightly so. The word 'fuck' on a jacket is not a disturbance of the peace.
Your tone and language look to me like you just don't like the idea of free speech. Tough shit. It's irrelevant on Slashdot (private property, remember?) and very firmly enshrined in law in the United States. You're pissing in the wind.
Here is a thought to consider: Instead of posting a myriad of messages (which I think only serve to encourage this kind of continued behavior) in response to this and other Trolls who simply don't get the nature of the social contract that is /., why don't we as a community agree to a standard boilerplate reply (Subject and Comment always the same). As an ad-hoc rule each such message previously moderated as a Troll only gets one such "boiler-plate" reply, once that reply is posted the parent Troll is off-limits to additional posts. Kind of a scarlet letter of sorts that is in addition to the accepted moderation rules of /. I think this might help to serve a couple of useful purposes: 1) Limit well-intentioned responses to Trolls that only encourage such further behavior, kind of an institutionalized "inattention" if you will, and 2) allows another level of moderation (without having to make wholesale changes to the /. system or somehow hinder Anonymous posting) to a much broader audience that specifically addresses the activity of un-welcomed Trolls. I don't know, there might be problems with this approach, any thoughts out there on how something like this might work? How might something like this be abused? Could we as a community come to some consensus on some "unofficial" rules for this type of moderation?
Totally. To yearn to be something you're not is the most human thing, maybe there should be a movie about a robot that wants to be human, and then at the end it finds out it was human all along.
Nah. It'd be too hard to write.
This way of plot-making really is seriously wrong. Like if there was a movie about a girl who's good in school, and sexism makes her want to be a boy, and at the end she gets a sex-change. Sickening put that way, isn't it?
Well, at least it is all imaginary.
Work together for the Common Geek Good:
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
Sorry, I meant to rename this post as Scarlet Letter.
Changing one character shouldn't be a big deal. I don't doubt that something could be done (esp. in Perl, for God's sake) that would find "close matches". And if it did, you could have it take a looong time to send back the "rejected" page. It's not a bad notion at all, if you ask me. Or at the very least, it might be worth investigating.
--80md
>Williams can't help but lapsing into the most >wide-eyed, saccharine dialogue and >character-development.
He might be able to help being wide-eyed, but if the dialogue and character development are in the script, then no, he can't help them, because ACTORS DON'T WRITE THE SCRIPT!
Sorry, just one of my things.
True enough, though for the general public, it *is* a new theme. Star Trek has traditionally appealed to the same audience Asimov's work appeals to, and only through this movie is that message finally making its way to everyone (including non-Sci-Fi fans).
Remember in the book when Andrew's law firm decides to not to pay one of their janitors "...because he's obviously a robot..." due to the fact that he has a prosthetic heart. An absurd claim indeed, but deliberately made to set a precedent that blurs the line between human and robot, thus facilitating Andrew's growing claim on his own humanity. Too bad they just cut the scene out; it would have been useful to the plot engine to ambiguate (is that even a word?!) the boundary between Andrew and the human race.
Solomon Kevin Chang
Database Design and Programming
Disney Televentures
(Yeah, sorry, it was my parent company that did the film)
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Well, if a machine didn't have emotion, it couldn't /want/ to have emotion. Organic systems have a goal - survive. That goal gives them will, which translates into wants, desires.
I disagree. The evolutionary value of emotion is as an additional stimulus to act, one not based on the rational processes developed in human brains. When we lack enough data to rationally decide, we fall back on earlier mechanisms: emotion/instinct. Emotion itself is a combination of impulses based on past history not conciously processed, plus biochemical impulses that have been subject to the process of natural selection for thousands if not millions of years. There's an evolutionary value to acting without sufficient data, and a process that mimicked this in computers might be equally useful.
That's my theory at least.
--LP
Jon Katz's intellect remains razor-sharp as usual. Keep up the good work, Jon!
My interpretation of Daneel's development of the Zeroth Law was that he had finally become human.
The entire series of Daneel detective books (Caves of Steel, etc) dealt with Daneel's evolving human characteristics: friendship, loyalty and honour. I saw the Zeroth Law as his final understanding that advancing humanity was the greatest accomplishment any human could make. The human's time for living is short (unlike the almost immortal Daneel) so it is only through great accomplishments that humans can live forever. When Daneel recognised this, he was able to postulate the Zeroth Law, and also was able to believe in it strongly enough to break the other laws without burning out his circuitry.
Quick-And-Dirty Review (Rant?): The Modular Man by Roger MacBride Allen
The Modular Man takes Bicentennial Man in the opposite direction: How many cybernetic replacement parts does it take for a man to stop being human? This question is well explored in the main plot. The sub-plots are based on his view of future technology, which is about 90% complete:
- Functional, utilitarian robots for the masses.
- Centrally-controlled androids working the corporate campus' menial tasks.
- A UN ban on cybernetic components that connect directly to the brain or spinal cord, leading to:
- Ultra-expensive cybernetics that turn physical disabilities into socio-economic ones.
- "Remote persons" that use myoelectric-controlled telepresence androids, allowing the severely disabled (billionaire) to interact with, but not integrate into, society.
It's at this point that the 90-90 law catches up to Mr. Allen, because of a planetary-mass-sized hole in the plot. The last 10% of the technology is unfulfilled, leaving 90% of the ending feeling contrived and somewhat manipulative. Ironic, considering that a lawyer feels the effects most of all, and our modern legal system would never let the plot device in question exist in the first place.ObSubject: I always approach movie adaptations of books with skepticism. The Columbus/Williams reunion had me expecting R. Doubtfire, only sappier. Looks like I was right on both counts.
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
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The best part of this movie (for me :) is that I got to see it for free - they actually shot it at Oracle, where I work, and now they let us watch it.
:)
Those bluish glassy round buildings (factory where he was build) are not great computer graphics, they are cool architecture! I sit in them (and, according to the movie, make robots) every day
Robin Williams plays the same role in every movie: an ethnic robot doctor who discovers life. Man Robin - for God's sake - get some new jokes for the TV talk show circuit. Your imitation gags are pretty fucking predictable and lame.
Well, Bicentennial Man comes only shortly after the Poistroinic Brain was invented, centuries before the first worlds (besides earth) are colonized. So, the Zeroeth Law hasn't been "invented" for at least a couple a centuries. Even the 3 are fairly still only roughly put into the robots at this point.
Wow! You sure opened our eyes! Watch out, people: artificial intelligence is going to take over soon! Your affinity for robots and distrust in humans is funny. It seems that you have seen the Matrix more times than you should have. Don't worry, man. We'll let your neato robots (with emotions and minds of their own) have their own way. Get a life.
Robin Williams as Hollywood's 2nd gay robot
Giskard's nervous break down was the result of the action he took to make the earths crust radio acticve thus forcing the people of earth to flee, and to spread out into the universe.
Condeming millions if not billions to death caused his nervous break down.
Daneel did not take direct action in causing the earth to become radio active and thus did not suffer the nervous break down.
Free as in "the Truth shall set you..."
An immature individual with a chip on their shoulder, a poor grasp of the facts and a defective Caps Lock key opined: LET HIM SHOW MY IP , AND IF ANY DAMAGE IS DONE I WILL SUE HIS ASS FOR IT, AND IN THIS COUNTRY, YOU KNOW ID' WIN. Merely posting an IP address of a computer does not constitute grounds for a lawsuit for denial-of-service, trespass or any other similar computer crime. If someone initiated a denial-of-service attack after reading the IP addresses, then you can sue that person if you find out who it is. However, it would be very, very difficult to sue the person who posted the IP address for a variety of reasons. It would be like suing the phone company for publishing your address after someone broke into your house and stole your telephone. You also need to consider your own legal position. If you are the person who posted all those 'moderator point eater' posts, then it is quite possible to prove in court that this constitutes a denial-of-service attack, and that therefore you should pay damages. I hope you know a good lawyer, because you may NEED one soon.
Short Circuit.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
Compare Neuromancer with, say, 'Imperial Earth' by Clarke. The tones are utterly unlike. Both books conclude with a clear finishing point, but again they're totally unlike. The Gibson book concludes with a big conceptual leap played very deadpan, and the idea is on a cosmic scale, also nihilistic (as it will mean very little to the protagonist who's left behind by the lessons of the narrative). The Clarke book concludes with a small choice played up for effect, and the idea is small and personal and rather sentimental- but will affect everyone in the story, and (it's suggested) for the better.
Why would the latter be _worse_? It's hard to argue that the William Gibson universe is better than the perhaps sentimental Clarke universe (or indeed Asimov's universe). It is as if people wearing Nike sneakers and waiting for their stock options to vest want to find a vicarious nihilism through modern SF writing, a bleakness that they are looking for and not finding in their own lives. One might well wonder whether there will be a recurrence of hope and meaning in SF literature in the next five years- since the Real World is poised to deliver another wake-up call.
Of course, if you read and believe 'The Long Boom' voodoo happytalk, you might as well get heavily into reading the most nihilistic and meaningless cyberpunk you can possibly find: it might be your subconscious trying to tell you not to be too much of an idiot :)
how about this easy answer to it all. GROW UP. if you don't like the way things are on slashdot, LEAVE. DUH. It's that simple. Hang out some other place rather than pestering and annoying the shit out of the people who might acutally enjoy reading the comments and sharing their thoughts. Just grow up.
My understanding is that Asimov was reacting to the earlier tradition of the golem, Frankenstein's monster, etc. in which all such creations turn on their creators. He purposefully made it impossible for his robots to do that because that plot had become cliched. Of course, once Asimov had written enough about them, the Three Laws became their own cliche, but that's obviously not how they started.
Funny, even though you called this guy "dumbass", it seems like you agree with each other.
:)
That's amusing.
Just because an IP is posted, doesn't necessarily mean other /.ers will start cracking or denial of service attacks. It means we can ALL mail his admin.
One abuse complaint probably isn't worth an Admin's time. 5000 complaints will get results. 50000 complaints will get the abuser dragged into an office for some 'splaining.
The act of posting an IP should not be taken lightly, and the ability to post an IP should be restricted to a minority of highly trusted people (like Andover employees) But for outright abuse, it's a damn good idea.
Incidently, I think people like "naked and petrified" are nearly as bad as the flagrent abusers. I don't think they deserve having their IPs posted, but they should be contacted and warned off.
Trolling isn't funny. It's abuse.
Who said anything about violence?
Just because you visit someone to tell them f2f that their conduct is unacceptable doesn't mean any intent to do them physical harm.
Sheesh, what kind of people are you?
People who write for a living should know how to spell "its", as in "art form of its own"
That is the mother of all SF sagas. IA was so much scientist that his stories are throughly enjoyable from a technological viewpoint as well. I believe no other SF writings come close to the Trilogy or the Robot books. The universe created is so vast and rich, both spacially and temporally, that the reader feels really small and insignificant, yet feels a part of this universe. The Trilogy would be a much worthier replacement for the Star Wars series, as much as we might have enjoyed that one. True, the scope was much larger, and the storyline far from simplistic enough for the target audience, yet it would have created something to be less ashamed of for linking.
On the other hand, who could have done such a monumental work sufficient justice without raping it for the benefit of cheap thrills and large ticket sales? Maybe with the ever decreasing price of computing power smaller production houses can one day take on the task without compromising the original work or its cinematic potential.
How wrong I was. No, I haven't seen the film, but I can't make myself do it (the shorts were too much to bear). JonKatz describes the movie as "a mainstream sci-fi romance". Isaac Asimov's Bicentennial Man was a tragedy, not a romance nor a comedy. While watching the shorts I was in tears, but for all the wrong reasons.
(For those of you wondering where you might be able to get a copy of the original short story, there is a book called the Super Hugos, a collection of the best of the best Hugo Award SF&F Short Story winners.)
Just because you visit someone to tell them f2f that their conduct is unacceptable doesn't mean any intent to do them physical harm.
You're right; it doesn't necessarily mean that -- however . . .
Sheesh, what kind of people are you?
Optimists!
. . . had interesting plots'n'characters as well as good writing. Heinlein for example. Not to mention a lot of really impressive SF writers who came later, like Silverberg, Frank Herbert (okay, Dune was the only good book he wrote, but it's really damn good), Orson Scott Card, Iain M. Banks, and um, I dunno, probably a lot of others
For my taste, Asimov's fiction (with the exception, actually, of "Nightfall") is so damn dry, and his characters so flat, that I can't wade through it to get to the ideas. To me, his fiction reads like a pretext for the ideas. YMMV, though, as you say.
The title is Foundation's Triumph.