Dave | unobtrusive lucidity

A Review of I, Robot

My copy of I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. — My copy of *I, Robot* by Isaac Asimov.

Tillich, as part of his thoughts on theology and art, said that artists are the prophets of their day. I think of this sometimes when I read or recall literary works that have proven prescient to our present time. I wonder, even, if we would have made some of the mistakes we’ve made in our recent history were we a culture that is more well-read.

The obvious example that everyone immediately reaches for, of course, is Orwell’s 1984, having provided stark warnings regarding our current age of surveillance capitalism. The examples, though, are not necessarily always dystopian. When writers and creators imagined new worlds such as Star Trek, they inspired a generation of people, some of whom are technical geniuses, to build the fantastic technology that they saw and wanted to experience. Viewed through that lens, its no wonder that humanity has achieved some of the things that we have in the last two decades or so.

This sprang to mind for me recently when one of our kiddos asked me when the first robot was built. I recently read I, Robot by Isaac Asimov, and, while I read it during an insanely busy time in life and have not yet even managed to transfer it to my bookshelf as of when I write this, I found myself thinking about just how well this novel predicted the last few years, in spirit if not in fact.

What’s interesting about reading Asimov is that you’ll find his popular works have not translated well to the screen. The film adaptation of I, Robot and recent Foundation series are so far removed from the source material as to only share a name. You see, I also grew up watching Star Trek and dreaming about those possibilities, as well as reading Asimov and Henlein. To follow Tillich’s argument, Asimov is particularly prophetic in his predictions among this group. Reading his work, you’ll find he had difficulty imagining some things that are commonplace today, and he certainly got some things wrong. Characters in his novels tend to still read print newspapers, even when space travel is involved, and he imagines a world powered exclusively by nuclear energy. It’s easy to shrug off his work as that of a dreamer, especially if reading a story such as Foundation that covers such a huge swath of time.

I, Robot also covers a significant sweep of history. Asimov imagines the introduction of robots to humanity, and the development of the technology from its nascent, primitive stages into a critical lynchpin of society that humanity eventually cannot imagine functioning without. My initial inclination as I read this was to think that we’re currently in these nascent stages. Certainly, robots assemble things in factories, provide surgeons with more precise tooling, and vacuum our floors. Robots performing autonomous tasks still seem a long, long way off as I watch the last device on that list try to navigate my living room, however, and, were that the extent of where we are in Asimov’s imagined history, I think that his assertions would seem laughable.

Only in our very recent memory, though, have we shifted our aspirations to being digital. When Asimov wrote this novel, these amazing technologies were imagined as complex electronics, focusing on the hardware and how the “positronic brains” of the robots could function. Now, we think of what we can achieve with code, and how that code drives the hardware. While the black swan event of the Internet was not in Asimov’s story, the blending of the digital and physical…the software and hardware…was very present, even though he couldn’t really articulate how that would work.

This book, of course, is famous for the Three Laws of Robotics, and much of the novel centers around how robots, becoming sentient, navigate these pre-programmed laws and, ultimately, work around them. As humans make robots responsible for the day-to-day operations of society, the laws, which center around obeying and never harming humans, become more loosely defined as the machines coldly calculate the good of the many over the good of the few.

As we are now at the beginning of the use of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, and are already beginning to offload a disturbing amount of decision making to this opaque and inhuman engine, I realize that we’re seeing what Asimov foresaw in a blurry dream arrive in an abrupt and distinctly sharp focus. Our AI’s are developed by corporations for profit. There is no concept of Asimov’s three laws (honestly, I might feel less reticent about AI if there were), and, if we’ve learned anything about technological advances, it is that they are certain to be weaponized. I, Robot ends on a sinister note, as the creator of much of modern robotics is left wondering if a new leader of the global world order is, in fact, a robot. Imagine a single individual leading the entire world, and our not being able to disprove that this person is actually an AI in an incredibly realistic robotic body. That concept is, or should be, terrifying.

Another theme that is developed is, can human beings create a life form which can become sentient? If we can, what are the rights of that sentient life form? We are already hearing discussions around this, pondering if AI will have rights. Asimov saw a Frankenstein realized, a thinking, feeling digital creation that could take control of all of us while we tried to simply grasp the extent of what exactly it is that we’ve managed to create.

As we encounter the extinction-level event that is artificial intelligence, I, Robot gives us a startlingly clear portrait..or prediction…of the direction we are traveling, quickly, blindly, and with reckless surrender. While some details differ from what Asimov pictured, the results, I fear, will ultimately be the same.

Memories, Re-Mixed

I have a couple of drawers in my home office that are entirely given to the relics of my childhood and teenage years. I don’t go through them often, they’re a bit cluttered, and to be honest I couldn’t tell you the entirety of what’s in them. Occasionally, though, I’ll be in search of something specific and end up opening one of those drawers to rummage through them. Inevitably, this leads to my pulling something out and spending some time in the fond memories attached to that object.

Some time ago, I was doing just that, and found some old cassette tapes. I was sorting through these, mostly because I’m constructing a list of songs that I used to own on this medium and that I now want to have digitally, when I stumbled onto an old mix tape.

Now, if you’re of a certain generation, mix tapes were a hallmark of your childhood. I think that a constant for every generation is the importance of music. It filled my years all the way through high school and college, with songs coming to represent specific moments in time, certain events. When I was in high school, everyone had a mix tape or two alongside the rest of their music collection. I was an audiophile early on, and my pride and joy through my middle school and early high school years was the stereo system that I had assembled in my room. CDs didn’t become commonplace for a while, and everyone owned music on cassette. Even in college, cassettes were the way to purchase singles when you didn’t want to buy the entire album.

Mix tapes were different in many ways. When I stumbled onto this old one, it was a window into what I was thinking, what was important to me, my dreams and struggles at that time. Even though I can’t play them now …because who has the hardware to play cassette tapes anyway?…I think that the physical objects are important. Sure, we can reconstruct them with playlists now, but playlists are ephemeral, or at least they tend to be for a generation that seems content to rent and never own their music.

Now, I anticipate a (justified) philosophical argument here that music, like any other art form, isn’t intended to be owned, but permit to me offer a counterpoint. When I was young and I waited by the stereo, listening to my favorite FM station with my finger hovering over the record button of the tape deck, ready to press down as soon as I heard the opening notes of that favorite song, I was doing so because that song was important to me. The music had value, and was not expendable.

We’ve lived in a handful of apartments in our life, and some of them have been excellent places to live. They were always expendable, though. I knew we would never owned them, and thus never invested in them. I knew they would go away one day, and so never became overly attached. I’ve purchased albums, though, that I’ve nearly worn out on physical media. They were that important. I memorized the lyrics to those songs, often without even intending to, and can still remember many of them today.

A few months ago, my daughter and I were shopping at a bookstore. There was a section dedicated to vinyl, because it’s a niche now, and she was exploring. The conversation went something to the effect of:

“Dad, what are these?”

“That’s how we used to buy music when I was a kid.”

Often, when this same daughter wants to watch a favorite movie or program, one that we frequently own physically, she will just reach for the Apple TV remote to stream the program. Once I asked her why, and the response was that it’s easier. Certainly, I and everyone reading has done the same thing, but I think that the convenience has cheapened the experience somehow. While incredibly useful to be able to watch whatever whenever (especially when traveling), there’s a lost sense of discipline and community that occurs when you waited a week for a new episode and knew that all of your friends would be watching it at the same time that you were. Or, gathering with your friends at a theatre to watch a movie together. Having that within reach anytime I want insinuates that it is not as valuable, not a work of art but rather just data to be transferred over the wire.

Last year, my daughter received a record player as a Christmas gift. She’s become very interested in purchasing music on vinyl, and we’ve started shopping for music together. That’s a really great experience, and I suspect that, at some point, she’ll become aware of the value in the music she physically has rather than the music she can instantly access, because (hopefully, at least, in part) she’ll remember a event attached to that album when she picks it up to look at the cover…maybe even that she and I shopped for it together. And while I doubt that she’ll ever get to experience making a mix tape, I think that this may be the next best thing.

The Power of Photographs

Over the long weekend, Liz was going through some old photos from the before times that are still on her Facebook. The girls piled on and were ooh-ing and ahh-ing over these memories (“Dad looked like that??”). Of course, the time distortion field was in full effect, as these photos aren’t that old. And yet, to the girls, they feel like a lifetime ago because many of these photos pre-dated their births.

In all honesty, they feel like forever ago for me, as well. I’m not certain I’ve really experienced the full impact of seeing these photos of myself from around 15 years ago and thinking about how much younger I looked, how much more full of life and excited about possibility that I appeared. To be more precise, I’ve never experienced the cognitive dissonance of seeing those memories and then looking in the mirror today in quite such a profound way as I did this weekend. For what could be the first time, I observed myself and thought, “I look old.”

I also feel old in many ways, as all of the normal rush and pressures of just living seem to be taking more of a toll on me, of late. Of course, these pressures only increase as the girls grow into amazing young women, and their adventures through school continue. As most parents can relate, I’m exhausted.

The memories are taking a toll also, in their own way. I had to step away from the reminiscing we were having at one point because I missed those days so badly it almost physically hurt. So much was this, that I actually momentarily regretted deleting my Facebook account years ago, as it was the only connection I had to so many people from that time (what I truly regret is that it was the only connection I maintained to those people, but I digress). Part of this is the inevitable and distorted lens of nostalgia, pining for a world “that was so much better then” (although, given the rise of AI and our current political climate, I think we could objectively say that it was, in fact, better then). Another part, though, and perhaps this one is the larger part, is wanting to grasp back some of the sands that have flowed through that hourglass.

After our first daughter was born and I returned to work, I remember a colleague walking up to me one afternoon and asking me how the family and new baby were doing. I made the requisite joke about not sleeping much, as I recall. What I remember as if it were yesterday was his response:

“You cherish every day.” He said pointedly. “Because tomorrow she’s going to be in college, and you’ll have no idea where the time went.”

Looking back on that moment, I’m struck by how much more seriously I should have taken that advice. It’s not that I didn’t take it seriously, I just couldn’t frame the unknown in my mind. I had no idea how fast those years would go by. Because I had no idea, I wasted so much of them in ways I had promised myself before my career change that I never would…long hours of work, trying to achieve things, trying to be secure financially. I wasted them because I was bored and just wanted to move on. I wasted them because of my discontent.

And as we were looking at those photos together as a family, this struck me the hardest, because there were many things that the kids remembered so well…often when I was included in the photo…that I just don’t remember. I was there, but I wasn’t present.

So, I feel old. There are dreams that I wanted to accomplish with my life that I haven’t, and that I’m not sure I will now. There are things that we dreamed of doing when we were first married that seem just as out of reach now as ever. Those feelings are real. Much more, though, I feel regret because of the time I wasted that I’ll never have back. I’ll regret that until the day I die.

But I’ll also make every attempt that I can to not waste any more, whenever it is in my power to do so.

Those memories not only bring happiness when looking back on those times together, but they also motivate me to learn from my mistakes. In that lies a huge part of their value.

And in that lies my greatest challenge.

Here’s to tomorrow.

The Nature of a Hero in Fantastic Four: First Steps

A long time ago (and no, I won’t finish that sentence…), in the before times, I started writing a series of reflections on the Nature of a Hero. I added to that periodically through the subsequent years, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been motivated to re-consider these themes. Largely disappointed with what has become a mass market of superhero stories recently, I had forgotten the power that these stories can have in the lives of the viewer or reader. Marvel’s latest cinematic installment, Fantastic Four: First Steps, had brought me back to thinking about this theme, though, because it has a depth that has been missing in recent Marvel and DC films.

I’ve written a more general review elsewhere of the movie, and here I want to focus on the theological themes, but I’ll say up front that this is the first movie since the most recent Spider-Man installment in which I’ve truly felt as though I’ve seen an exploration of heroism. The character of a superhero is, at it’s surface, someone who has some sort of advantage over those around them, whether that be resources, abilities, or metahuman powers. They can do things that the rest of us can’t. In reality, those are only storytelling devices to get to the depth of the nature of a hero, however, as the constitution of a hero is ultimately the choice to take what they have use it for the better (usually in the defense of) those around them, often at great cost to themselves.

The Fantastic Four, as the team was originally concieved, is ultimately about family. The characters go through a life-changing crisis with each other that results in them gaining their abilities, and that crisis could have proven catastrophic. They get through it because they are there for each other, as a family, both in the biological and extended sense of the word. They are role models for how family members support each other, without question and without condemnation. They are heroes to each other first, and by extension, heroes to the rest of the world. This movie introduces the Fantastic Four to the MCU in a separate timeline, where they are the only heroes, and have been world-changing, positive influences to the world around them. The world-building shows a dream of a planet at peace because of their heroism, but the focus, established by a positive pregnancy test in the first scene, is inward, as a family unit. This is the state of their timeline when they are visited by the Silver Surfer, heralding the coming of Galactus and the destruction of the Earth.

As the plot progresses and the Fantastic Four encounters Galactus for the first time…not as adversaries, but as explorers…we’re suddenly gut-punched by a theological metaphor that’s difficult to miss. To spare the Earth, Galactus demands Franklin, Sue’s unborn child. Reed refuses. Insistent, Galactus uses the power cosmic to induce Sue’s labor then and there, and the heroes narrowly escape.

They return to New York, already being celebrated as heroes. When the gathered crowd is advised of Galactus’ demand and their refusal to pay it, the crowd becomes angry, demanding an answer to “are we safe?” There remains an uneasy tension as the Earth wrestles with the ethics of sacrificing one to save millions. The good of the many, as Spock tolds us decades ago, outweighs the good of the few. And so we watch Sue Storm fiercely protect her son from a public desperate to ensure their survival.

There’s no escaping a Christological metahpor here: the sacrifice of one’s child to save humanity. This is compounded by the fact that comics readers know that Franklin will grow up to possess a nearly omnipotent ability to re-write reality to his will. Of course, all metaphors break down at some point, and I’m not sure that this one in particular was intentional on the part of the writers, but it’s certainly there. Of course, Sue and Reed refuse to sacrifice their child, and any mortal parent would make the same choice, I think, hero or otherwise. This reinforces the higher level of love showed by Christ, “…in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, NKJV).

There is a different spiritual theme that’s driven home, as well. Not necessarily theological, but spiritual in a more secular sense, is the focus on saving the family. Sue’s monologue to the gathered crowd is beautifully written, and she does something very important in this speech. She re-defines her family as all of those gathered. The important message here, and one to which I think our culture would do well to listen, is that we all have more in common than we think. What Sue does that’s so important in this scene is to break down the “us vs. them” mentality, and the result is a world-wide cooperation in a plan to save the planet that would seem to be an impossible dream in our world today.

The concept of heroic self-sacrifice enters the story at least one more time, as the Silver Surfer wrestles with her role in contributing to the deaths of billions of people on various planets in her role as Galactus’ herald. She accepted this role in a self-sacrificial gesture, choosing to be indentured into this servitude to spare her own planet and family, but appears to come to a realization of the lives she’s traded by the end of the film. Ultimately, she chooses to sacrifice herself in a more complete sense by defeating Galactus, pushing him through the portal and away from Earth instead of Johnny. Here, she chooses again to take someone else’s place in a heroic act, but in this moment, she chooses repentance from her lethal travels as Galactus’ herald.

Part of the reason I’ve been so enamored with this film is that it’s the first superhero film in some time that I’ve seen do what superhero stories should do: provide a metaphorical depth that causes us to theologically wrestle with the human condition or, at best, our relationship to God. At its core, this is the reason I’ve always loved comics and superhero stories, and it’s been absent in most movie ventures of late. I’m thrilled to see it return. I encourage you to see Fantastic Four: First Steps, and see how it causes you to think about these themes.

Where Have All The Good Guys Gone?

Last week, I finished watching Ironheart, the latest installment of Marvel’s Cinematic Universe. My disappointment is difficult to overstate, but this isn’t intended to be a review of the series. Rather, I observed it solidify a theme that’s become increasingly obvious to me since I recently heard the death of post-modernism proclaimed.

If we rewind into comic book history a bit, Marvel’s take on the heroic narrative has always been different from DC’s. DC came first, with Marvel appearing soon after, and they each have distinctly different perspectives on their characters, but what has remained consistent is that Marvel injects a gritty realism into their characters while DC tends to hold theirs above the fray, as it were.

Each of these mainstream comics lines, as they developed from nascent pulp into a new literary genre, encapsulated a cohesive mythology in their stories, what in today’s pop culture terminology we would refer to as a “universe.” While its noteworthy that antiheroes have always been present in both (DC has always had Catwoman, Marvel has always had Namor the Sub-Mariner), the focus was on the fight of good vs. evil, and that’s what’s compelling about these stories. We are all instinctively aware that there is an evil that we can’t fight, and we desire someone to help, to fight that battle for us and win. The difference, over-simplified, is that DC has historically held these heroes who fight our battles up as larger than life, more than human, an over-arching theology from above approach. Marvel has historically taken more of a theology from below stance, focusing our attention through the eyes of those with the same flaws as ourselves.

While this has morphed over time to adapt to the current moment (something at which this art form is particularly adept), the foundations have proven to be persistent in the DNA of the different universes. I think that’s why, as deconstructionism has been the watchword for a generation, we’ve seen the suspicion that all good must inevitably turn out to be disappointing play out more in Marvel’s narrative than in DC’s.

Let’s think back to what we now know as Marvel’s Phase 1. This was the first legitimate attempt to reproduce the cohesive mythology of comics on film, and it was successful. As such, it began with normal people taking on extraordinary challenges…Tony Stark builds his iron suit, Steve Rogers takes the super-soldier serum…and are rooted in the greatest generation and the purity for which it stood. We’re then introduced to Thor, who holds good above all else, and even Bruce Banner is willing to sacrifice all of his dreams to prevent the monster raging within him from wreaking havoc. As this universe has expanded and unfolded, though, we’ve seen it adapt to the modern age. All heroism has become suspect. The Scarlet Witch became the villain, driven mad by grief. Tony Stark loses sight of morality and creates Ultron. Loki, a villain, saves the day through his self-interest. Steve Rogers gives up his shield to live a life he feels he deserves. Dr. Strange chooses to meddle with dark forces to defeat a threat to humanity, believing that the ends justify the means. The list goes on, culminating in the Thunderbolts, a team of antiheroes held together by a “why not” mentality, replacing the Avengers in a world that needs heroes, but is seen as incapable of producing them. Of the past 3 years’ worth of the deluge of Marvel offerings, only Spider-Man truly embodies the nature of a hero, and he ultimately must suffer from that decision.

In Ironheart, we thought we would see a hero, but instead are presented with a troubled character who occasionally does good, but ultimately holds a similar tragic flaw as Stark. It’s difficult to define Riri Williams, who writers forced into Wakanda Forever. While certainly not a hero, I have difficulty defining her as an antihero, either. Rather, a character who could be intricately and compellingly written becomes a symbol of the collateral damage of what could barely be called an age of heroes, someone who ends her series making a Faustian bargain to resolve her grief.

Having never been an adherent to postmodernism, I’m exhausted, and think many others are, as well. The ultimate end of deconstruction is a void, in which there is nothing to believe, no faith to hold, a cycle of cynicism that destroys from within. In my reading of comics, I think that’s why I’ve gravitated more toward DC in recent years, because in print they have often avoided the emotional morbidity of their films.

What has always drawn me to superhero mythology is good vs. evil, the hope that the good guys win over the bad guys. This collapses in on itself, however, when good and evil are not defined. There has always been space for antihero narratives (the Watchmen being the ultimate example of this), but even in these lie a recognition of good and evil that is lacking in most of these recent films and series.

Comics as an art form have always held a mirror to the current moment. Postmodernism is troubling in its belief that all is relative, that good is often evil and evil is often good. I’m interested in the new Superman film, even with all of the flaws I see in its trailers, because it appears, at least visually, that this could mark a return to true heroism. As we look up in the sky, I’m in hopes that we’ll be reminded of what a hero looks like. If our cultural interest in deconstruction truly is waning, then the art form would be holding its mirror to that, showing that we’re ready for good again, ready for a hero.

How refreshing would that be?