i, Robot: the abominable movie

Ok, so the movie wasn't bad. I mean, I love action and robots and cool ideas as much as the next guy, but I hate that they used Asimov's short stories in the title, and I'm even more appalled that the Asimov estate allowed it! I mean, what's next, letting them create a Foundation movie that has nothing to do with the plot of his best-selling trilogy, except maybe that there's space involved?

I wouldn't have minded if they had just used the 3 laws and left it at that, but from having read a lot of Asimov's writings, I just can't believe he would have wanted to put such fear out about robots taking over. A lot of his robot novels were almost criticizing Earth's reluctance to allow robots to do menial labor, and the fear and loathing of those robots by Earth's backward-thinking inhabitants.

Terminator, i-Robot, Stealth, WarGames, Matrix....the list goes on and on about computers and robots that start thinking for themselves and turn bad, or just try to defend themselves and therefore wreak havon the human population. Of course, who can blame them? With the world they live in and learn from, and the applications for which they are used. I just wish that more of Asimov's ideas would make it in the movies. But then, I guess they just aren't the blockbusters...just take a look at Bicentennial Man. Poorly executed, yes (like Artificial Intelligence: AI), but much less of the fear factor.

What will the average world citizen think when robots are commonplace? I'm a huge fan of the "simple" robots we have today (Roomba, RoboMow, etc) that do our manual chores (more on those later), but they're a far cry from humanoid robots, so they seem more like tools than thinking machines.

Anyway, I'd like to see some of the positive aspects of robots come out more in the media. Then maybe people will want to spend more money on research so we can get out of the information age and get into the robotic age.

Thoughts and ideas

Here we are, in the 21st century, and it's pretty amazing what we've come up with so far in the realm of tools, toys, etc. So what's next? When will a machine be able to learn, adapt, think, create?

I don't have the answers. I've got a lot of questions, and some thoughts and ideas of my own (many of them seemingly off-topic), and maybe, just maybe, we can figure some things out, by thinking and talking and creating.