Caroline Kunkel Journal 6

One of the things that I found most interesting this week when we watched the first episode of Humans and during our following discussion was the two ways robots were seen. One of the ways we have seen robots represented, which we saw time and again throughout Humans as well as in Asimov’s The Bicentennial Man, to list a few, we saw robots as subhuman beings. In these two sources, the robots were treated as slaves and free labour, allowing humans to live in luxury. This treatment of robots was seen as particularly odd during Humans, when we see the interactions between Anita and the mother, who insists on treating Anita as another conscious being rather than as a robot. In addition to this, we saw in the treatment of Andrew in the Bicentennial Man which paralleled the treatment of slaves in the United States. What’s more, Andrew’s struggle to become human, while superficially different, paralleled the slaves’ struggle and fight for freedom and recognition as human beings by the US government.

In contrast to how the robots in Humans and The Bicentennial Man were treated, the Multivac in Asimov’s The Last Question and All the Troubles in the World is treated and presented to the readers as an almost God-like being of authority. This is evident first in the way in which the Multivac is able to see the deepest secrets and workings of everyone over the age of 18 to the point that it can detect lies it is told. This deep understanding of everyone seems to mirror how some people see God as an all-knowing being from whom you can hide nothing. This idea is furthered through the fact that everyone on earth is able to ask the Multivac anything they wish, and accept its answer without question. One thing I find to be rather interesting is that, like God, the Multivac knows about all of the troubles of the world, as the title of the story would suggest, and by knowing all of this terrible information, the Multivac wishes to die. This raises the question of whether or not Asimov is implying that God would wish to die as well, having all the knowledge that Multivac has. The parallels between God and the Multivac continue in The Last Question, when this machine, which evolves over time to finally become the cosmic AC, is linked to every person throughout the world, then throughout the galaxy, universe, and finally throughout the entire cosmos. In this story we see people time and again asking this being, which they have never seen or interacted with before, if there is a way to reverse entropy. This question and the manner in which it continuously comes back throughout time is reminiscent of how people ask the same questions of God time and again.

In addition to the seeming duality of robots throughout science fiction, there is a common commentary on women that occurs throughout the texts and television programmes mentioned above. In all of his texts, Asimov portrays women as being hysterical, frail beings which are subpar to men. For example, in All the Troubles in the World, the only female character is Mrs. Manners, who we see acting hysterically as her husband is being taken away. Beyond the way she acts, the fact that she is the only character not given a first name, being referred to only as Mrs. Manners, suggests that Asimov sees women as being lesser than men. We see similar portrayals of women in Asimov’s The Last Question when again, the only female characters are not only given silly names, perhaps so that they might not be taken as seriously, but are also depicted as having shrill, shrieking voices. This depiction of women as being lesser, hysterical beings is also seen in the mother character in the television programme Humans. The mother of the house is seen as being irrationally opposed to her family’s having a robot to help around the house, and when she sees the interactions between her youngest daughter and the robot Anita her behaviour boarders on hysterical when for forbids Anita to touch her and take care of her. All the while, the father of the house not only sees his wife’s concerns as being silly and irrational, but also matter-of-factly tells her that he needed Anita to take care of the house since the mother was not there, implying that he could not do the work because it is a woman’s job.