Robotic Humanity
There is a book that was created in the
1940’s by a man named Isaac Asimov. It was
an incredibly inventive book about robots
in the 21 century. It went through a series
of short stories, all only a few years apart
in the book. The book itself consists of nine
stories and spans one hundred and
forty-eight pages. In it, Asimov detailed the
robots functions while emphasizing the
“Three Laws of Robotics” which was the
primary directive every robot was
programed with. The laws themselves were for the protection of humans,
compliance to human demands, and for the robots own self-preservation. The
overall base for these short stories was that they were being told by a renown
female robopsychologist, which was the fancy term for a psychologist who
only worked with robots. The book went through some of the important
developments in the lengthy history of robotics and explored the wealth of
possible things that a robot might be able to do in the 21 century.
Out of all of the short stories in the entire book my favorite was one titled,
“Reason.” It was a story about two technicians in charge of making sure a
solar energy station in the middle of space would be able to run with only the
operation of robots. A newly made robot, nicknamed Cutie, was to be in
charge of the station. He pondered his existence and attempted to synthesize
a story of his creation. He deduced that it was the solar energy converter itself
that made him. It was at that point in the story where I drew parallels
between Cutie’s story and the origins of human religion. Many humans find a
higher creator and believe in it/Him with everything they have because they
do not want to believe in some of the possible alternatives, which is that we
were evolved over an eon by the natural selection process that every being
goes through. There is nothing to prove our claims that a higher being sprung
us into existence and yet a vast majority of us still believe it. That is why I
loved this story in the book the most. It provides us a parallel to religion where we can both see why Cutie would believe this while understanding that he