I’m interested in biomorphism in robots for more functional and foundational reasons than socialization ephemera, as I recently argued in a (paywalled) newsletter. studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/on-robots
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It is, I think, both dangerous and uninteresting to view robots primarily through the lens of how humans might relate to them (sexually, economically). It’s the same legibilizing error as viewing trees primarily in terms of furniture or lumber economics.
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As with any Promethean technology, intrinsic tendencies will rapidly overwhelm human intentions and we’ll shift to co-evolution. Happened even with clocks, telescopes, and steam engines. Don’t even need “intelligence” to be Promethean. Just network-effect generativity.
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Need a better class of robot stories that explore Promethean possibilities. I’m bored of robots wanting to be human socio-sexually or take over the world politico-economically. Let’s get on with the paperclip maximization stuff. That’s the interesting shit.
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Human-centeredness is for insects.
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One of the most powerful sources of comedy in robot stories is actually playing with the it/you boundary. Bender gags on Futurama often involve him showing an unexpected object/non-robotic-machine nature (he's a popcorn machine, beer still, etc)
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Replying to @vgr
There, put that in someone's mouth and you've got yourself a lampshade.
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This is actually the best developed part of Futurama robots -- all sorts of objects are reimagined as robots. Hedonism bot is basically a chaise longue with a brain. The Crushinator, the spaceship, the soda vending machine, the suicide booth -- all robots.
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I think Bojack plays with a similar humanness/horsiness boundary. And while we're on personhood, how could I forget Sirius Cybernetics and Real People Personalities™ -- doors, elevators, ship computers, drink machines (in fact I suspect maybe Futurama copied HHG for this stuff)
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In HHG, the primary dimension of variation for personhood is effectively the product catalog range of a large cartoonish 80s style corporation. Futurama is the same. Mom corp = Sirius Cyberneitcs.
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While not future-engineering-fundamental (the objects are familiar in today's techno-environment -- that's what makes for good gag jokes), the variety is from *past* engineering-fundamental spectra.
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Sirius cybernetics and Momcorp robots are basically "robots as intelligent furniture with personhood"
Extant built environment anthropomorphized, but satirically rather than narcissistically.
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For comedy, this works best if you impose trad gender onto object relations (ie, portray as it-you boundary, relate as he/she). But for a drama version of Sirius Cybernetics or Momcorp, you'd want to invent a fictive personhood scheme.
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Like, in a dramatic version of Futurama (which is admittedly hard to imagine since it is deep satire of 1950s futurism, down to the name derived from GM's 1939 World Fairs exhibit), you might imagine robots derived from vehicles vs. furniture vs. appliances as distinct "genders"
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Connection to Animism
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Replying to @vgr
As I said, this is the Elaine Scarry thesis.
Animism: all objects which are extensions of human capacity are alive. But we only notice when things go wrong.
amzn.to/3lT8VVd
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Reminds me of an article I read and blogged about way back in 2008 on why Japan is a particularly robot-loving nation -- a richer robot-relations imagination derived from animism. ribbonfarm.com/2008/03/12/jap
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Original article is from 2005, and reflects on why Americans seem to build robots like the Roomba that strive to restrain their personhood and look/act like appliances, whereas Japanese build robots that exaggerate personhood.
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This actually goes much deeper. A Japanese account I follow, tweets great photos of Japanese corporate mascots, which are a dizzying array of vaguely anthropomorphized things. You could build a fictional universe just using mondo mascots.
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