Author: Ellie Siegfried

This week we discussed the book The Caves of Steel by Asimov. The booked was placed in the future where there was life on other planets and where robots were widely accepted. On Earth, Asimov predicted a population of 8 billion and a situation where humans lived inside domes and never left the ventilated air and process food. The way Asimov painted Earth is not so different today. The population today is 7.4 billion and growing, and in cities, many buildings and transits are connected, sometimes underground or by enclosed walkways. On Earth, robots weren’t widely accepted.

Personally, I don’t think we are ready for change. For one, humans resist extreme changes. I think these days we love to update every electronic we have, yet if we introduced robots into the daily lives of people, I think there would be a lot of pushback. I think one of the many reasons for pushback would be our right to privacy. We often get worked up when we learn that websites track what we search online, that our emails and phone calls aren’t completely private, or that some streetlights take photos and videos of cars. I think since robots have to take in their surroundings, using them to violate personal privacy would be something the government or other organizations may try to do. Also there are people who could try to reprogram the robots for their individual benefit. This brings in the real problem we have been studying about how to make robots ethical.

The other big topic we talked about was how the women in The Caves of Steel are portrayed. Jessie was the main women character in the story and during our class discussion, we talked about how she was often considered hysterical, weak, bitter, impulsive, and other negative attributes. Jessie was like a robot to society, she had a husband and son and was treated as a robot. Her husband thought of her almost less than him, someone whose only job was to support him and whose hobby was to gossip in the bathroom. The other woman mentioned in the book was Elizabeth, an old maid who was Jessie’s co-worker and a Medievalist. This negative portrayal of women in Asimov’s book is not as surprising as some may find. The book was published in 1954, which was in between the first and second waves of feminism. If the book was published now, I think Asimov would get backlash and more people would criticize its lack of female characters and the way they are shown. We see the negative portrayal (or the empowering portrayal of men) all the time in stories; consider the fairy tales that we read to children. The women are beautiful, helpless, and their goal throughout the story is to find a husband. I know I am generalizing, but most fairy tales depict the men as heroic and the women as purely dependent on the men.

This week we talked about ethics and morals, two terms that can sometimes be mistaken as the same. Morals are the rules in society, the principles and habits that inform what is right and wrong. Ethics are the study of morality and the rational explanation of moral beliefs and behavior. These terms differ in how they are created, whether the behaviors are shaped by the individual or the society they are a part of.

On Thursday, we looked closely at moral dilemmas in the short story The Bicentennial Man. A moral dilemma occurs when moral principles are pitted against each other. Isaac Asimov writes a tale of a robot whose dream is to become a human. This story explores the line of what is human and what is not. In some cases, like this story, robots are changed to possess human like features. On the other hand, humans are becoming more robotic. This dehumanization can be contributed to technology and how much we rely on it.

The robot, Andrew Martin, is built with an almost human like consciousness. Andrew cannot refuse to takes orders from humans, yet he has an impeccable gift of artistry and woodworking. He is more creative than most robots and uses words like enjoy, to describe how he is feeling. Throughout the story, he starts earning his own salary, wins freedom from his human owners, starts wearing clothing, and in the end receives surgery so to die like a human at age 200. This whole time though, many humans, excluding those who were part of his original owner’s family, regarded him as a robot. The book uses the brain as the line between human and robot. Even though Andrew’s mind resembled a mix of a human and robot brain, he was not officially a human until the brain surgery.

Thursday we talked about energy transformation and how it relates to our current readings. Two days before, I participated in the campus walk-out.

In The Human Motor, we learn about idleness and how the definition changed over time. In A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, we see Hank Morgan, who comes from an era where idleness is not praised, live in an era where the King and knights live and wander aimlessly. They have no future goal to work towards and seem to live their life day-by-day, playing games and telling outlandish stories. In the 19^th century, technological innovation was thriving and progressing quickly. Even now, productivity and hard work are rewarded and idleness is looked down upon. One example of energy transformation in Twain’s novel is when Hank puts advertising sandwich boards on the knights. Hank saw the knights as lazy and jobless, and used them to promote soap. His soap advertising was a modern concept that he viewed as a step towards civilization. Hank used the energy the knights had, to educate the public; in this case, about soap and its importance.

I see energy conversion in the present time period also; from the Women’s March last month, to the walk-out we had on campus three days ago. The objectives of these protests are to convert the energy of the activists and momentum of these acts into social and political change. We disrupt daily routine to send the message of solidarity and the necessity for change. The Bucknell community came together to show that we would not be idle and passive; we would not continue on in life and pretend nothing happened. The similarity between the knights and the walk-out activists, is that we both used the energy of society to promote change. The difference is that the knights did it because someone of a higher rank, Hank, told them to, and we did it because we don’t agree with the current state of our country and our country leaders. I am proud to be part of a community that does not accept fate blindly, that does not settle for anything less than the acceptance of everyone, and that comes together in solidarity.

This week we read Twain’s The Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Rabinbach’s The Human Motor, and watched the film Expo: Magic of the White City, directed by Bussler.

Both The Connecticut Yankee and the World’s Fair film incorporate the theme of producing advanced technology and modernization in comparison to the era each scenario is set. In The Connecticut Yankee, Hank Morgan, man from the 19^th century, was transported to 6^th century England. There he used his knowledge of 19^th century technology to accelerate the modernization of King Arthur’s land. In the World’s Fair film, states and countries came together in Chicago for the world fair. Each nation had their own extravagant displays, each trying to outdo the other displays. This competition led to many highly advanced technological innovations. These technologies ranged from innocent entertainment, like the invention of the Ferris wheel, to serious technologies, like the cannons built by the Germans.

The innovation in both these tales seem to be ahead of time. In The Connecticut Yankee, Hank uses his expertise of technology to help improve life in the 6^th century, yet many deaths are due to the futuristic technology. During the world fair, the powerful cannons the Germans built that had all the visitors in awe were later used in war.

My question is, is technology advancing too quickly? The world is always changing, which means there is a certain amount of unpredictability that is expected; this can be in both positive and negative. My generation is used to rapidly changing technology. Electronics are constantly being updated and countries own very destructive weapons, such as nuclear bombs. Humans hold so much power, yet we don’t know the right thing to do with it. It’s a cycle of trial and error, fixing, and learning from mistakes. Technology advancement creates problems that are all interconnected. For example, new discoveries in medical research are always occurring, thus humans are able to live longer. Yet, this creates problems for our species such as overpopulation and climate change. We respond by inventing new technology to solve the problem and it in turn creates more problems. It is an ongoing pattern. The relationship between society and technology goes both ways, society shapes technology, yet at the same time technology shapes society.

Mark Twain lived through an era of significant industry growth. In class on Thursday, we talked about technological advancements such as typewriters, telephones, and railways, which made it easier for people to stay in touch. National corporations also began to play a huge role in society. With everything developing around him, the idea of going back in time with new progressive technological knowledge seems like a great position to be in. To the people in the past, Twain could use his modern knowledge and would seem like a genius; a magician. Before class on Thursday, I didn’t consider where Twain found inspiration; if the culture he was always surrounded by influenced his writing. After Thursday’s discussion, I can see how external events in his life could have led him to write “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court” and I feel as though he is living a what if scenario through Hank Morgan.

For Thursday’s history exercise, I chose to go back to the 60’s/70’s. To be honest, I chose this time era because of the musicians and bands that were leading the music industry. I could definitely picture myself as a hippie, I would love to have gone to Woodstock, and worn loose-fitting clothes. In class I was thinking of being me in the 60’s/70’s, but now that I have had more time to consider the question, I think it would be very interesting to be someone completely different. I would want to be someone who was a strong and effective leader and who identifies with the LGBT+ community. I think being someone who helps lead and organize the Stonewall riots would be such a different experience than anything I could have in the present era. And the riot helped start the beginning of the LGBT rights movement.

One thing to note is, there wasn’t internet in 1969. It is interesting to think about the present era. The Women’s March on Washington started out with a few women on Facebook and now it has spread across the whole country and it is expected that at least 200,000 people show up. In 1969, people still had phones and transportation, but didn’t have social media. Social media spreads news faster than word of mouth, newspapers, and radios. I wonder what it would have like there was Internet in 1969.