One of the major theme’s in this week’s classes is the future and robotics. In the first episode of “Humans”, we see common problems that may arise with the integration of human-like robots in a futuristic society. A family experiences tension over a robot’s influence over the children. In another scenario, a man is attached to a robot resembling a father-son relationship based on memories. Consciousness among robots is seen as a sort of a “disease” needed to be eradicated by roboticists. What’s very interesting to me is that Asimov’s three laws for robots could easily be grounds for creating advanced robots in the future; science fiction no longer becomes fiction as depicted by the first episode of “Humans”. The topic of specieism also comes into play when thinking about the potential relationships humans and robots may share in the distant future. Is it right to grant a life form the ability to fathom freedom without ever granting it freedom? Why would we create robots similar to us when we fear greatly if they become too similar? Similar to The Bicentennial Man, “Humans” also shares the idea that man is uncomfortable with it not being the top species on Earth. Robots and androids can be made to come close, but the minute they cross over us and become indistinguishable, or equal, we suddenly become afraid. Perhaps it is a pride issue, that we are experiencing somewhat of an identity crisis, as if our entire existence, who we are, our happiness and memories, can be crafted out of metals and circuits. It almost seems selfish that the human characters in these stories seem like they believe that sentience and true consciousness should only belong to humans, as if we were born with that right.
Asimov’s other story “That Last Question” was also one of my favorite reads from this week. Upon reading this short story, one can really experience the extent of Asimov stretching his imagination to trillions of year in the future. “The Last Question” breaks down the universe’s relationship with man and man’s constant pursuit of energy. Once, it was coal and fossil fuels. Fastforward billions of years in the future and man has learned to harness energy of the stars, however they are harnessing energy faster than the universe is expanding. What is so strange and incredibly fascinating about this story is the last words uttered by the Multivac: “Let there be light!”. For someone who is viewed as one of the greatest science fiction writers in history, I would never have expected a religious theme or element to be the backbone of one of Asimov’s stories. It seems as though the Multivac created something similar to the Big Bang after man had ceased to exist.
The story also reminds me of a potential theory I have come to somewhat believe may be true: the heat death of the universe theory. As we know, energy cannot disappear, only be converted into different forms. If one were to sit in a room with logs, paper and some matches and create a fire, all the energy stored in the logs and paper would be converted into heat. After some time, however, the heat will fade and the energy be converted into an almost irretrievable, useless form. Trillions and trillions of years into the future our universe’s stars will dwarf and run out, as Asimov describes in “The Last Question”. All energy will be converted into somewhat of the irretrievable form aforementioned. Another aspect of the heat death universe I have thought about may be that the Big Bang is caused by gravity alone. Gravity in our universe is thought to be alien, something not from our dimension. It is like tendrils moving through all possible objects in space at once as it bends space and time. Every single object in space has a gravitational pull, from the largest plane to the smallest rock. Gravity does not need energy to move forces. So, when the heat death of the universe comes, gravity will take affect and over an unfathomable amount of time, all mass present in space will pull together into one mass. In this one mass lies all the energy lost into useless forms, and maybe, if we put aside some logic, this big lump of mass compresses into something like the big bang and the massive amalgamation of energy expels the mass of matter in all directions, creating a new universe. This of course seems like an improbable explanation for the birth of universes but is one I have been thinking about for quite some time, especially now after having read Asimov’s “The Last Question”.