Man's fascination with Robots in the Social Imagination...

 

Why are we so fascinated with robots?

Perhaps, its because we like seeing the human form expressed in art; a 'reimagining' of ourselves in a kind of permanent ongoing state of being. Paintings and sculpture produce that effect and have had such an effect across the ages. 

Lately, mechanism is being more used as a medium for expressing our 'reimagined' selves. This 'reimagining' may seem a 21st century phenomenon, the natural result of a sci-fi-saturated culture, coupled with recent advances in computer technology, but that's not true. Thousands of years before machine learning and self-driving cars became reality, the tales of giant bronze robot Talos, artificial woman Pandora and their creator god, Hephaestus, filled the imaginations of people in ancient Greece, [https://news.stanford.edu/2019/02/28/ancient-myths-reveal-early-fantasies-artificial-life...].

Before we return to the posed question above, we should review famous science fiction writers and by doing so, find the answer. Isaac Asimov was a Russian-Jewish immigrant born in 1920 in Petrovichi, Russia; already known as the Soviet Union. Asimov was brought by his parents to the United States at age of three. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and graduated from Columbia University in 1939. During World War II, he worked at the Naval Aviation Experimental Station in Philadelphia along with science-fiction authors Robert Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp. After the war, in 1948, he obtained a Ph.D. in chemistry from Columbia, [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isaac-Asimov].

Asimov then joined the faculty of Boston University, with which he remained associated thereafter. He was a successful American science fiction author and biochemist. As for his books, he was and is most famous for his classic Robot series and the Foundation which is a retelling in outer space of the fall of the Roman Empire, [https://www.britannica.com/biography/Isaac-Asimov].

R. Daneel Olivaw was the infamous fictional robot created by Isaac Asimov. The "R" initial in his name stands for "Robot,". In his introduction story, Daneel is said to be not only made in the likeness of one of his creators but is also the first robot physically indistinguishable from humans. Asimov's laws of robotics are not scientific laws, they are instructions built in to every robot in his stories to prevent them malfunctioning in a way that could be dangerous. The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm, [Wikipedia].

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in the Soviet Union, other Jewish science fiction writers were flourishing. The most prominent were the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. They survived the Siege of Leningrad as children. Their Jewish father did not. The Strugatsky Brothers went on to write such classics as Roadside Picnic (1972) and the many tales of the Noon universe, which imagines a Socialist utopia extending far into space. In Poland, the Jewish Stanislaw Lem became one of the leading writers of SF in the world: he is best known in the West for his classic novel, Solaris (1961), [https://lithub.com/jews-in-space-on-the-unsung-history-of-jewish-writers-and-the-birth-of-science-fiction/].

Jewish writers seem to have had cornered the market regarding such far reaching science fiction. However, American Ray Bradbury, of Swedish and English descent, who was considered a giant of science fiction, wrote two classic robot short stories: There Will Come Soft Rains and I Sing the Body Electric (aka The Electric Grandmother, [https://raybradbury.com/life/]. Let's not forget to mention among science fiction writers Frank Herbert and his imagined Dune universe. 

And, so here we are again, being brought back to face the question... what is man’s fascination with robots? I like the idea of man loving to see him/herself in art; and, now in mechanism as an 'art-form'. That may sound like self-worship; however, its much more about understanding the self in context of a creator. Truly, I think Asimov had it correct when he wrote of his created robot character, R. Daneel Olivaw. 

Asimov said he had to be not only made in the likeness of (at least) one of his creators, but also had to be realized as the first robot physically indistinguishable from humans. For me, that goes beyond art. That reflects man's desire (back to ancient times) to be eternal... moreover, to know his creator and to be in his image.