Robot Visions

For the first time in history, skilled machines, or robots, will be able to do those mindless jobs. Any job that is so simple and repetitive that a robot can do it as well as, if not better than, a person is beneath the dignity of the human brain. As technochildren turn into adults and move into the work world, they will have time to exercise more creativity, to work in the fields of drama, science, literature, government, and entertainment. And they will be ready for this kind of work as a result of the computerized revolution in education.

Some might believe that it’s simply impossible to expect people to be creative in large numbers. But that thinking comes from a world in which only a few escape the mental destruction of jobs that don’t use the brain. We’ve been through this before: It was always assumed that literacy, for example, was the province of the few who had minds peculiarly adapted to the complicated task of reading and writing. Of course, with the advent of printing and mass education, it turned out that most human beings could be literate.

What does all this mean? That we will be dealing with a world of leisure. Once computers and robots are doing the dull, mechanical work, the world will start ru

This is not just guesswork. There have been eras in history when people had slaves-the brutalized, human version of the computer-to do the work for them. Others have had patrons to support them. When even a few people have had ample leisure time to pursue their interests, the result has been an explosion of variegated culture. The Golden Age of Athens in the late fifth century B.C. and the Italian Renaissance in the 14th to 16th centuries are the most famous examples.

Not only will people have the freedom to pursue hobbies and interests and dreams, but a great number of them will also want to share their talents. So many of us have a bit of the ham in us. We sing in the shower, take part in amateur theatrical productions, or love to swing along in parades. It is my guess that the 21st century may see a society in which one-third of the population will be engaged in entertaining the other two-thirds.

And there are bound to be new forms of entertainment that one can now foresee only dimly. Three-dimensional TV is easy to forecast. And space may become a new arena for activity. In near-zero gravity, for example, the manipulation of balls may produce far more complicated forms of te

What about those people who choose not to share their bents and interests and instead retire into worlds of their own? Someone who is interested, for example, in learning about the history of costumes and who is capable of exploring the libraries of the world from an isolated comer might simply stay there. Might we, then, find ourselves in a society in which an unprecedented number of people are intellectual hermits? Might we breed a race of introverts?

I think the chances are slim. People who grow ferociously interested in one aspect of knowledge or expertise are quite likely to be filled with missionary zeal. They will want to share their knowledge with others. Even today, someone who has an obscure field of interest is far more likely to want to explain it to everyone he or she meets than to sit silently in a comer. If there’s any danger, it’s that an arcane interest will nurture a loquacious bore rather than a hermit.

We must not forget the tendency of those who share interests to wish to get together, to form a temporary subuniverse that is a haven of concentrated special fascination. In the 19708, for example, someone had the idea of organizing a convention for Star Trek fans, expecting a few hundred at most to attend. Instead, fans poured in by the thousands (and television was supposed to be an isolating medium!). On-line gatherings, in which the computer is the medium and people are actively involved, will experience similarly high levels of participation.

And in between the formal get-togethers, there will be a kaleidoscope of people linked into global communities by computerized communication. Perpetual conventions will take place, in which individuals continually drop in and out, bringing in findings or ideas and leaving stimulated. There will be a constant melange of teaching and learning.

What I foresee is a society in intense creative ferment, people reaching out to others, new thoughts arising and spreading at a speed never before imagined, change and variety filling the planet (to say nothing of the smaller, artificial worlds that will be constructed in space). It will be a new world that will look back at earlier centuries as having been only half alive.

The Machine And The Robot

To a physicist, a machine is any device that transfers a force from the point where it is applied to another point where it is used and, in the process, changes its intensity or direction.

In this sense it is difficult for a human being to make use of anything that is not part of his body without, in the process, using a machine. A couple of million years ago, when one could scarcely decide whether the most advanced hominids were more humanlike than apelike, pebbles were already being chipped and their sharp edges used to cut or scrape.

And even a chipped pebble is a machine, for the force applied to the blunt edge by the hand is transmitted to the sharp end and, in the process, intensified. The force spread over the large area of the blunt end is equal to the force spread over the small area of the sharp end. The pressure (force per area) is therefore increased, and without ever increasing the total force, that force is intensified in action. The sharp-edge pebble could, by the greater pressure it exerts, force its way through an object, as a rounded pebble (or a man’s hand) could not.

In actual practice, however, few people, other than physicists at their most rigid, would call a chipped pebble a machine. In actual practice, we think of machines as relatively complicated devices, and are more likely to use the name if the device is somewhat removed from direct human guidance and manipulation.

The further a device is removed from human control, the more authentically mechanical it seems, and the whole trend in technology has been to devise machines that are less and less under direct human control and more and more seem to have the begi

The clear progression away from direct and immediate control made it possible for human beings, even in primitive times, to slide forward into extrapolation, and to picture devices still less controllable, still more independent than anything of which they had direct experience. Immediately we have a form of fantasy-which some, defining the term more broadly than I would, might even call science fiction.

Man can move on his feet by direct and intimate control; or on horseback, controlling the more powerful animal muscles by rein and heel; or on ship, making use of the invisible power of the wind. Why not progress into further etherealization by way of seven-league boots, flying carpets, self-propelled boats. The power used in these cases was “magic,” the tapping of the superhuman and transcendental energies of gods or demons.