(urth) Robots

[David Stockhoff]

On 3/28/2012 1:11 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> David Stockhoff wrote:
>
>> Without having read the story (though I will), I want to comment that the
>> "moral robot" has been around at least since Asimov's "3 laws," which
>> basically hardwired robots to be MORE moral than humans.  Naturally they
>> represent the kind of rational and dispassionate morality that we humans,
>> for a few hundred years at least, were imagined to aspire to.
> More to the point, the Three Laws of Robotics are designed to make
> Asimovian robots the perfect slaves, and thus a coded way of talking
> about the situation of minority persons in general and blacks in particular
> at a time when you couldn't openly talk about that stuff in popular fiction.
> (If you have any doubt about this, note how hostile humans refer to a
> robot as "boy.") Reading Asimov's early robot stories with this in mind
> opens a whole world of social commentary right there on the surface.
Yes, the double-standard regarding murder is especially ironic in that 
light. I don't actually recall that use of "boy"---but then I wouldn't, 
would I.