WESTERN FANTASIES OF

ROBOT FUTURES
Ever since the days of the medieval Christian church, dreams of mechanical labor saving devices have been pervasive in the West. But what few people realize is that the quest for such devices is driven by a deep-seated fear and hatred of women. Christian monks lived in a monastic world without women, since women in the Christian belief system epitomized filth and evil, tempting Adam and condemning humanity to a life of sin. So having women around -- even if only to do the cleaning, cooking, and farming -- was unthinkable in monastery culture. The best minds of that all male world fixated upon inventing labor saving devices as eventual replacements for women, since celibacy had already removed women from fulfilling their child-rearing roles. Centuries later, with Western scientists replacing monks, the same impetus drives much of technological innovation. From cloning, a sort of birth without a womb, to the new generation of robots, intended to replace women’s domesticity, the masculine millennium is upon the world.

In Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind (Oxford University Press, 2000), robotics pioneer and techno-guru Hans Moravec spends a great many pages describing both the practical and theoretical aspects of a cleaning robot that will be able to operate on its own: vacuum and clean a home, find its way around by sophisticated eye-like sensors, and even recharge itself. But there is more to this book than tales of high-tech vacuum cleaners. Moravec is uniquely situated to tell robot stories, having been among the pioneers of modern robotics. His life is in many ways the history of robotics, and his books simply extend the present into the future by posing questions and extrapolating possible answers. The earliest robots were like little more than children’s toys, mechanical novelties in a culture known for its love of gadgets. But research on visual guidance systems for autonomous robots faced serious problems due to the memory requirements needed for computers to navigate complex environments, so most early robots remained stationary, sentenced to lives of routine tasks such as assembly line work. Moravec envisions fully mobile computerized robots that will be able to walk, talk, and think on their own.

Moravec admits that such machines will initially be few and far between, sequestered in laboratories and homes of the rich and famous, but he hopes for an eventually more widespread acceptance: ‘As the rising flood reaches more populated heights, machines will begin to do well in areas a greater number of us can appreciate. The visceral sense of a thinking presence in machinery will become increasingly widespread. When the highest peaks are covered, there will be machines that can interact as intelligently as any human on any subject. The presence of minds in machines will then become self evident.’ A focus on mindful machines drives Moravec’s work.

Moravec's understanding of mind and intelligence is dependent upon taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in cognitive science and much of cybernetics, both of which privilege quantitative reasoning over other forms of intelligent awareness. His analysis and predictions require seeing humans as machines, exacerbating old Cartesian dualisms between mind and body in the guise of new science. This foundation is necessary for his thesis to make sense, before he can predict eventual robot advances over human intelligence. But if machines will eventually embody Western man's worst pathologies and insecurities, they ironically might also help human beings to become more human in all their organic and imperfect frailties and their unpredictable wants and wherefores.

For now, as it has been since the beginning, thinking machines on the Western model remain a Holy Grail, due largely to the physical limitations of computer and communication technology. According to futurists working in the American computer industries, bandwidth increases via fiber optic networking by the year 2010CE will revolutionize the internet with speeds heretofore unimagined, a condition upon which Moravec's predications are dependent. But this still leaves open the problem of the 'last mile,' the final run of cabling that actually delivers the fiber optic signal to individual computers. Industry sages see this as the major obstacle to full fiber optic actualizing of computer communication, which means that Moravec's fantasies will likely remain those of the rich and famous only, at least to the extent that they can be realized at all. Wireless systems will face similar setbacks, though Moravec tends to focus more on land-based systems and he pins his hopes on smaller and faster memory chips.

Moravec sees several obstacles to total robot utopia, the most crucial ones centering around the memory limitations of computer chips and micro processing power. But these are only temporary hindrances, he assures us, because soon enough computers with processors that operate at tens of thousands of MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) will be commonplace. In fact, he sets a date at some time in the middle of the 21st century when computer-processing power will surpass that of humans. But the thesis is flawed, and relies on the same old Cartesian and Newtonian assumptions that utopians like Moravec claim to have transcended. Rather than thinking as humans, computers that ‘think’ may only redefine how humans understand thinking by normalizing definitions of intelligence that depend on computerized metaphorical thought.
But let us indulge this fantasy a bit longer. In Moravec’s future, humans will upload their minds into robotic orbs that will roam the universe tethered to the earth by alloy cables. These mind orbs will soon form self-perpetuating ‘seed colonies’ on planets and asteroids in the farthest reaches of the solar system, and eventually, ‘linked realities will routinely transcend the physical and sensory limitations of the "home" body.’ It’s hard to find a more alienated vision of the future, with its staggering disregard for anything except the realm of abstract thought. In the spirit of Plato, Augustine, and Descartes, Moravec has not transcended the Western norms of life and existence; he has merely brought them to their logical conclusion: complete and total separation of mind from matter by way of computer technology.
Maybe this is a turn for the better. Perhaps futuristic gurus, corrupt corporate executives, self-centered politicians, and the Western world ruling elite who wish to defy God or Mother Nature by living forever can either virtualize themselves, or, better yet, commit bodily suicide after uploading themselves into robot orbs that can then colonize the coldest outer reaches of the solar system. Good riddance. As long as they don't first destroy the warmly balanced earth with their competitive schemes and insatiable lusts, perhaps in the end the advances Moravec envisions in computer power, cybernetic futures, and the transcendent mind will rid the tired planet once and for all of the arrogant powers, leaving the rest of humanity to live simple and humble lives in their bodies on earth, as it was meant to be.