(urth) Robots

[Allan Anderson]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 3:20 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> 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.


Ah, right--I remember this from Elijah Baley in _The Caves of Steel_,
before he became a stinking robo-sympathizer. Excellent points. I remember
wondering if Asimov was making a coherent point with that, or just
appropriating a term for its emotional impact.
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