A.I. and the Cultural Rhetoric of Computers
Here's a pretty old legacy post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 23 years ago, in 2001, on the World Wide Web.
I went to see A.I. today. The film was visually stunning and had a strong, if often sappy and very Oedipal plot line. I decided it would be a good time to finally get around to reading this intriguing article from Salon on the depiction of robots and mechanical intelligence in science fiction, and how it reflects our need to define ourselves in opposition to computers and technology. The mechanical intelligence of science fiction is usually either (a) docile servant, like Robby or Asimov’s robots, in which case it serves (for the male scientist-engineer) as the perfect substitute for women and for the proletariat, or else (b) hypermasculine and threatening because it is so ruthless and instrumentally rational and physically powerful and therefore a danger to humanity, like SkyNet or HAL, because it has violated its expected slavelike position. The futuristic robot acts to express both the hope and the terror of the male bourgeoisie.
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Read your Nietzsche. Slaves and masters are the natural roles into which intelligences fall. There is a way past this state, but it requires a holistic learning which no computer is likely to have, as no human is likely to have, until possessing a fair amount of experience with the processes of life and living themselves.