Robot Wars

My focus is on the play RUR. Along with everyone else I am quite surprised by the advanced content and nature of the play. Firstly through the use of the word “robot” which was coined in this play and by the moral discussions it brings up, that are very relevant to our society now. This seems to be the first time in automata that automatons or robots are actually mistaken for humans so explicitly. Usually there are signs that lead to the uncanny affect (in last weeks discussion), where it is so close to reality but just misses it, making it all the more scary (like the reference to the eyes). With the emotional technology of the robots and the fact that they are biological machines, with livers etc. – it seems the only difference between a human and a robot in this play is that they are assembled rather than born. This small fact seems to give the humans justification that they are not at all alike and that robots are merely soulless creatures.

This obsession with creation that, predominately male, humans seem to have, has brought forward a few questions. Are these creations a way of humans progressing? In the play it is obvious that progression is made because the economy gets better through the diligence of the robot work force and the world becomes more efficient. However, is this actually helping the human’s progress? They will just do less and less, maybe become more ignorant of life and in the end not progress at all, but in fact digress. This reminds me of WALL.E when all the humans are sitting in a little spaceship bubble, relying entirely on computers, and are all morbidly obese! Man’s relationship to technology and their increasing reliance upon it is something which can be seen as a potential threat to humanity in the play. It seems, however, that these are very extreme stories and that in reality that would never really happen. But I don’t think I have that much faith in humanity to see scientists stopping, when they have a technological break through even though it might be detrimental to other people’s lives.

This leads me to another point. Has this not already occurred? Capek wrote the play in 1920s very shortly, only a few years in fact, after the First World War. This is a prime example where technology was used even though it was seriously detrimental to other people’s lives. It was the first time that machines had created such desecration on such a large scale. However, it also created an unnatural environment for the soldiers too. The soldiers acted as machines, given orders, fighting for king and country, without any allowance for moral decisions or free will. In fact soldiers have become even less than that. Since the First World War warfare has becoming more technological, more “progressive” and at the same time more destructive. A soldier on a battlefield at the end of the twentieth century counts for even less than the soldier of the First World War, making even less of an impact, than the machines they work with. War has now just become a battle of the machines.

In an article by Patrick Wright (http://www.patrickwright.net/books/tank/about/) he talks of tanks in the First World War and how the tank first emerged in 1916 to meet the requirements of the immobilised western front. But they became less of an instrument of war but more of an interesting concept for humans. “They were gendered – categorised as male or female according to their weaponry”. Not only was the tank helpful, it also signified a comfort, “The symbolic impact of the tank – it was called ‘the moral effect’ in the early days – remains essential to its operation, and not just in peace-keeping operations”.

Another thing that occurred to me in the creation of these perfect robots, is that we are simply trying to create a better version of ourselves all the time. Like the flute player that was mentioned in one of our articles earlier in the term, it needed to play better and so skin was added to the fingers, so it played more like a human. However, if this was the case, then why do we set these “wonderful” creations to do all the menial tasks in our lives? Maybe even these robots, even though they can feel emotion and pain, still harp back to the first point made in automata, that they are just an extension of us.

Back to the obsession of creation by the male. As Jo pointed out, women seem to be stereotyped, as we discussed in the lecture, as just being blank pretty faces. However, when the robots are created in the play they do not have the ability to reproduce, which then becomes a major problem for them when the formula for a robot is destroyed and all the humans are dead. However, doesn’t this just highlight the major importance of women? They give birth and essentially give life. So maybe the role of women in the play is bigger in the play than we at first realise.

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