My Robotic Romance

So, this has brought me out of my blog slump.
[http://machinist.salon.com/feature/2007/11/29/robot_love/index.html]

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who knows me even a little bit that I love robots. Like rilly, rilly, love robots. Hence: the Robbie the robot figurine on my window sill, the inexplicable sympathy for the Daleks, the early morning wishing for a coffee/cleaning robot in the manner of the Jetsons' Rosie, the childhood dream to be turned into a kid-robot in the style of the red dressed, white aproned "Small Wonder" (am I the only one who remembers that show?). And of course the "choice" Conchords song set in "the distant future: the year 2000." Good news for the dorky single girl then to learn that robot boyfriends may well be the way of the future. Very good news indeed...

To give you the lowdown:
One hardcore nerd called David Levy has just written a book about "Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships." What a title huh? I love that use of "evolution" - genius! The main gist of the argument seems to be "love is a powerful force, wouldn't offering humans opportunities for unfettered, uncomplicated love make the world a better place." For a guy who's working on computer technologies for his PhD this is a pretty simplistic reduction of the issues. Luckily, Salon's Machinist asks some better questions, like:

"is getting a robot built to order like ordering up a hooker to your hotel room?"
- perhaps, though the "refund if not satisfied" policy is certainly easier to administer with the robot.

"is a perfect love really love at all, even if it feels like it? Isn't love, like all life, by definition complicated; if you're loving a robot, are you really loving -- are you really living? -- or is the whole thing a simulation, like a very real video game?"
- Well, maybe, but if you extrapolate this idea far enough you could argue that life itself is just a very real video game (RIP Baudrillard, you crazy mother-ucker). If love, or any human experience for that matter, needs to be “real” (ie. Involving other humans) where does that leave the countless things we do that don’t involve other humans? Time on Facebook – not real; time watching the Sopranos/the Conchords/the Boosh – not real. Time reading enormous fabulist book about history of modernity – NOT REAL. The large part of my life is spent in the not real. And the part that is real is usual populated with the most frustrating individuals known to man, woman or bot.
Another thing, what if you fell in love with someone but didn’t spend anytime with their real body? What if you loved them via one remove of reality? What if your love was mediated in some way – like say for instance the way I love Brendan Fraser, locked in time just like he was in Encino Man. How is my loving Brendan Fraser circa 1993 any different from my loving a robot-o-boy?
And on that point about the video game simulation–if you're "just practicing" with the robot-beau then are you also “just practicing” when you treat someone in a less that wonderfully-human-being-ish way (i.e. a one night stand, a booty call, etc.).

Now having backed myself into this particular postmodern corner I’m thinking about the flip side. One thing not mentioned here is the question of embodiment. More than some half-baked idea about “real love” (i.e. fights, bad sex, imperfections, annoying habits) versus simulated perfect robot love (i.e. order up your ideal mate and wait for delivery) is the real sticking point: hard bodies; or soft bodies; or whatever. Bodies count. Salon’s Machinist asks: “Doesn't mortality deepen love -- isn't the preciousness of your love, its susceptibility to diseases and deprivation, part of what makes the feeling so wonderful? Could you love a thing that didn't die?”
The answer to that last question is certainly yes. Plenty of things. But that’s not my point here. More than plain old mortality, the thing that puts the kick in love has got to be the body. Bodies are, after all, the one site of distinction between “friendship” love and “ba-da-bing” love. When bodies get involved things get complicated. Human bodies are like litmus paper, they put emotions to the test; they’re surefire indicators of attraction, repulsion, pleasure, pain. If a robot boyfriend turns up on my doorstep, sure, I know he’s been programmed to love just the stuff I love, but then, who hasn’t? Most of the time, if you’re fishing in the right pond, culture has done all that programming for you, right? So the bigger question is, how would you deal with the notion that your Robo-hunk had no innate hardwiring connecting his emotional CPU with his chiselled Robo-hunk exterior? So, yeah, I still working on that... But there is one thing I’m excited about – we’d both love Kraftwerk, that’s for sure.