LAST NIGHT BOOK OF RICCARDO
INTRODUCTION
One day it could happen to sit at a the negotiating table very special. On the one hand, the seats will be occupied by the great earth. The representatives of the United Nations, the heads of state, Nobel laureates and the highest religious hierarchies of all denominations in the world. But on the other singular beings will line up of metal and silicon, possibly humanoid, perhaps by the whimsical shapes and even unimaginable. If so will our descendants will assist in Interplan, the future version of the Internet, accessible through a chip implanted directly into the brain, one of the most surreal negotiations that has ever been recorded in living memory. And in memory of the machine. Why are the protagonists of the great debate could be their machines, that is smart and sensitive devices. In a word, the robot.
This unique assembly will have much to discuss. We will have to establish laws, regulations and penalties, but we will also verify the feasibility of some critical social exchange. Purist, fundamentalist and racist of all types and species may be against the morality of certain "trade". Insinuate that someone has gone too far, that certain forms of promiscuity show that society is in disarray, that someone should put things in place, it is necessary to return to the good old days, when cars were cars and men's men.
But it will be a minority, and without arguments. Hopefully.
The scenario described above could raise a smile. In fact we wanted to exaggerate, but then not so much. The future could really restrict what Isaac Asimov had called the Iron Age / Carbon, to designate the merger, but the misunderstanding and sometimes conflict between the two forms of intelligence and feeling very different: one is born the genius of the other, but both on the road on the same street as parents and children are in the path of life.
Today some of these scenarios are the subject of international conferences at the highest level, where among other things discussing "roboethics", a new discipline that combines robotics, jurisprudence and ethics. Of course, in these debates at the heart of the problem today concerns the relationship between the military robotics industry. You may use weapons more intelligent? How far you can venture into this kind of research? There is a no? How did the war change the robotics concept of conflict? And so on. But there are more radical questions, test themselves on which philosophers and scientists who are trying to rethink the problem of man-machine relationship in light of current impressive progress.
Similar discussions are born of urgency, since it seems that the fascinating weave of plastic and metal, invented by poets and artists, multiplied in a thousand different artists and scattered throughout the film industry in over a century old, is to break the mold of the imagination to play somewhat the role of reality.
The robot with the unlikely appearance of the Terminator or C3PO is a popular subject in the iconography so ingrained as to be credible in any event, in spite of everything, even in spite of the obvious concerns that come at any time by the real designers of intelligent machines , ambassadors of the extreme modernity.
The persistence of a symbol is almost always the work of mental tyranny of a "meme" efficient. If, as is believed, the meme is the informational and cultural equivalent of the gene, then a successful meme must replicate from mind to mind, just as the virus multiplies from one cell to another. If this replication process will lead to undifferentiated cell death is not a virus problem. Similarly, if the meme in question bears within itself the potential to destroy its host, well, is not an issue of the meme, especially if its host cell will prove to be so efficient and helpful to put him in a position to live on their own. But these are nightmares, which flourished alongside the many beautiful dreams. The robotics
meme is born without doubt the popular imagination, and in any latitude. It is therefore an inexplicable universal cultural trait, which can not be explained using the theories spread. Its persistence has influenced an entire field of scientific research, so we are in the presence of one of those rare cases where a product of the imagination under himself, emerges from the realm of ghosts to play the role of the harsh reality.
imagery precedes every installation. And this is the thread of Machina ex machina, a book that, like all books, was born from a gap, however, in this case, a personal shortcoming. In the book You, Robot, which precedes this text, it lacked an overview of the imaginary robotic developed mainly by the film industry, flying diffuse projections. Machina ex machina attempt to address these shortcomings by taking inspiration from the four cardinal points of human experience: love, hate, freedom and power. The book is largely devoted to the critical examination of known and lesser-known films in which the robot is the protagonist or the victim, God or infamous creature. Those who try will find it is not complete, although the author has collected more than four years of research in an impressive amount of material. The films are hundreds of robotic theme, and not necessarily the most famous are also the best. Therefore it is critical to cutting the privileged philological completeness, hoping not to have exaggerated in the synthesis.
This book would never be born without the help of the Korean Inkyung Hwang, who has been able to find materials unavailable to the author. And then having to express special gratitude to all those who for years have endured endless discussions on the limits and potential of the robot, which had to be typed reading and rereading of obscure or boring. Hard to believe that the robot can be fascinating topic of conversation over a candlelit, at least not for more than five minutes.
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