As the new decade dawns, the realization that we truly are in the 21st century, an era of high technology an scientific advancement, has become inescapable. Granted, we do not have the Lunar colonies or jet powered cars we were promised in the naive eras of the past which looked toward the future with youthful, dare I say childlike optimism. Today, which happens to be the future, although not the future we were promised, nor the one we wished for, is a gritty future still filled with slums, suffering, disease, war and invisible enemies. Our present, quite frankly, looks more and more like a dystopian pulp novel than The Jetsons. In an era of full body scanners being put into airports as a prerequisite to travel, cameras on street corners, terrorist data bases, biometrics, deteriorating infrastructure and economic collapse, our present looks bleak. At least we have robots.
The field of robotics, once the realm of science fiction and children’s cartoons, is advancing steadily in the 21st century. However, the advancements are rather disturbing when examined closely. In Japan, where they face a demographic crisis due to an increasingly elderly population and negative population growth, robotics is seen as an answer to the coming shortage of labor and services, and is a multi-billion dollar industry. However, in the West robots serve another utilitarian purpose, killing. The news is buzzing daily with reports of US Airforce Predator and Reaper drones raining death down upon suspected terrorists and any living being unlucky enough to be in the blast radius. In addition, any google search on military robotics will yield thousands of results to new articles about the US military fielding experimental combat robots in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as developing them for relatively benign purposes such as intelligence gathering or support and logistics.
However, a very disturbing trend I see is towards the sexualization of robots, and the use of artificial intelligence as an outlet for growing sexual dysfunction and satisfaction. As weird as it may sound, men having unhealthy obsessions with virtual “lovers” may become more common place as our addiction to technology and our cynicism about human relationships leads us further away from interpersonal interactions into virtual worlds.
Already, men have been busy building their perfect robotic lovers, and trying to make them more life-like, more intelligent and more interactive. Recently, robots built especially for sex were displayed in Las Vegas during an adult entertainment expo.
This trend is disturbing because it shows a breakdown in human relationships and society. We have been plugged into a virtual world for so long, into computers, video games, facbook, that it is becoming hard to separate the virtual world from reality. Not only that, but social alienation is leading people to be unable to communicate with each other properly, to establish real and meaningful human relationships. As a result, the trend may increase to where many more people give up on real human interaction and decide to spend thousands on dolls to entertain them. I see this as an act of cowardice, as turning away from reality and people towards virtual partners and fantasy worlds is an easy way to unplug, an easy way to escape the hardships of human relationships, the complications of romance and the bitter sting of heartache. Most saddening however, if that doing so will also deny the joy that life and love can bring, the simple pleasures of being close to the one you love, of that look of surprise when you arrive unexpectedly, of the smile and sincerity of the one you love. What has become of our society that people seek to escape reality, and are willing to pay such a high price for the illusion of control and happiness?
