Recently I watched the Iron Giant with my kids and something really surprised me. I got all emotional “Super… man”. Yeah it made a grown man cry! There is something that gets us about these mechanical creatures. As kids we were enamored by the likes of Robbie the Robot from Lost in Space to R2D2 in Star Wars. So what is it about them that captures our hearts. In this weeks Flurry Friday episode hear Chris Skaggs talk about his favorite childhood robot and remember how things WUR. Tell us why you love them so.
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Terribiliter Magnificasti Me Mirabilia
John, Data’s experiences in the simulation scenarios always cracked me up. I think I remember him in Sherlock Holmes garb trying to understand the human interest in the stories. Classic.
Interesting Lana. I (JB) watched Real Steel last night. I loved how the boy looked deeply into Atom’s eyes and asked “can you hear me”. We look to them to be the human we want most in others. Hmm.
I’ve always been a big Star Trek fan, so the robot that sticks out the most in my memory is Data from The Next Generation. I think Data trying to fit in with humanity really resonated with a lot of people, because they were trying to figure out their own place as well. Seeing that this supposedly perfect machine struggled so much with understanding humanity helped us to be more accepting of our own struggles. There was also some small pleasure at being able to do things that Data struggled with, like joke around and whistle and such.
I think what I love about robots is they point out just how human humanity is. Robots are programmed and follow their programming. Humans are so unpredictable and while teachable and trainable, programming just doesn’t stick. But in tv and movies robots come so close to being human that we want them to be able to over come their programming and be “real”.