Analysis of a Sixty Second Sequence of I Robot
Throughout this essay I will be analysing a sixty second sequence of the film I-Robot. Directed by Alex Proyas, the film was released in 2004 and was a hit at the box office. The film is an action-thriller inspired by Isaac Asimov’s classic short story collection. Asimov’s books set forth the three laws of robotics.
Law 1. A Robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Law 2. A Robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with first law.
Law 3. A Robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.
Although the film does not follow any of the short stories, the three laws are an integral part of the storyline and the philosophies set forth by Asimov are ever-present during the film.
Set in the city of Chicago 2035, the world has developed a considerable reliance on robotic ‘Automated Domestic Assistants’. They have become a trusted part of everyday life; cleaning homes, walking pets and basically doing everything that humans can no longer be bothered to do, and due to the three laws are trusted by everyone. Everyone except Detective Del Spooner, the main character played by Will Smith. He has a deep mistrust of the Robotic world due to an unfortunate accident in his past. On the eve of the release of the latest model robot, the NS-5, Dr Alfred Lanning (James Cromwell), the father of robotics, seemingly commits suicide. When Spooner is called to the scene, he is immediately suspicious of the circumstances and believes that the victim was murdered. Del digs a bit deeper and discovers a new model robot named Sonny locked in the office of the victim, who flees from the crime scene and refuses to obey the orders to halt given to him. The fact that the robot ignores commands that violate his central laws of programming is put off as a simple malfunction by Billionaire Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood), who does not want Del's suspicions to disrupt his business plans on the eve of the largest rollout of new robots in history. Naturally, Del does not follow this command and he suspects that there is a larger and much more serious threat posed to the public even though everyone around him says that he is paranoid. What follows is an action packed gam...
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...nning of the film he purchases a pair of trainers that he calls “2004 classics”. This behaviour is also seen in regards to his apartment. All the decor and technology including his hi-fi seem to be from the present day. No obvious reasons are given for this throughout the film. My opinion is that Spooner’s distrust of the robotic world is so deep that he prefers to live in a time before humans become so reliant on Robots. Wearing these cloths help him think that he is achieving this, although it is a futile attempt at hiding away from the robot world he lives in, as soon as he opens his front door he is instantly face by one.
What I have discovered from writing this essay and studying this scene is how every detail helps the audience where the story is, where its been and where its going. Many of which I would not normally have noticed, but now realise are crucial for helping the audience develop an opinion of what the film is about. Many of these facets may go unnoticed but it would be very noticeable if they weren’t there.
References
Tim O’Sullivan (2003) Studying The Media
Isaac Asimov (1991) I-Robot
http://shadows.wall.net/features/sw-wills1.htm
www.comingsoon.net
Over the past fifty years Japan has seen significant changes in all aspects of its society and the way it interacts with the outside world. For example, despite suffering a defeat in World War II, Japan soon became one of Asia’s greatest economic powers. In Japan in Transformation, 1952 - 2000, Jeffrey Kingston focuses on various aspects of change in Japanese society and politics in the period after World War II. These include the effect of the US occupation, analysis of postwar politics, the economic boom, changes in demographics, the treatment of women, and foreign policy and security issues. Throughout the book, the author tries and often succeeds to explain many of these changes as part of the legacy of the occupation. All in all, Jeffrey Kingston gives a thorough economic, politic and social analysis of this crucial period in Japanese history.
When the American Commodore Perry arrived and forced the Japanese to open up trading with the Americans in 1853 it caused a massive shift in the way Japan was run. The shogun could not deal with the looming threat and began a campaign of anti-foreignism “’Toi!’ (Expel the Barbarians!)” . The shogun eventually capitulated and began to allow foreign ships into Japan; this sparked the anti-foreign element, created by the shogun, to remove the shogun and reinstate the Emperor into power: “’Sonno’ (Revere the Emperor) was added to their mantra of ‘Toi’ to represent the old system where the Emperor was like a god. The Emperor took power back into his hands and renamed himself Meiji meaning “Enlightened Rule.” However, the Emperor did not expel the ‘barbarians’, instead he saw them as a method of creating a better Japan and began a campaign known as the ‘Meiji Restoration’ to modernize the nation. Japan needed to modernize because the western countries had forced the Tokugawa shogunate to sign unfair treaties that greatly favoured the western countries, notably the United States of America, Russia, Great Britain and France . One of the key events of the Meiji Restoration was the decline and fall of the samurai class in Japan. This essay intends to show the reasons for the decline of the samurai at the beginning of the Empire of Japan through the policies enacted during the Meiji Restoration. This will be shown through the military, cultural, political and social reforms enacted by the Japanese government.
This book explains the historic of Japan in a different era. Beginning from the Japan’s early developmental years what it is today; Japan in the 21st century. There are breakdowns in this book that tells the story of the different periods in Japan too. Tokugawa Era was considered a critical period in Japan’s history as it helped Japan evolved to pre-war period and Japan’s 21st century. The main highlight of the book was in regards to Tokugawa Era as the author mainly focused on this critical period and there was elaborate research on this topic. Tokugawa Era was brought about by Tokugawa Ieyasu who was a military dictatorship and he helped achieve hegemony and stability over the entire country after the control and ruling of Japan for over 200 years since the 1600. The author was an Asian history professor and knows what he is writing and many years of research and effort have been placed in this book which is apparent. In conclusion, this book does provide relevant and sufficient research on this topic of interest.
Firstly, Japan was dramatically changed after the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The Meiji Restoration was a political uprising which ended the era of ruling of the Tokugawa shogun and gave back power to the emperor Meiji. When the emperor returned to his position as ruler, Japan was the complete opposite of a military power, it relied on its farm land and had made very few technological advances. The Japanese people wanted to become a nation able to stand amongst Europe and United States (the Western Powers) especially after these western powers had unwillingly made Japan sign an accord that restricted its control over its own foreign trading and made sure that any felony’s involving foreigners were to be tried in western courts not Japanese. The first thing the emperor wanted to do after regaining his power was to get rid of the old government which they later did in 1871. In this year they also created their own army which was later increased in 1873. In 1912 when the Meiji emperor died japan had created a powerful government, a highly developed transport system, an educated population and a powerful navy and army. This period of time contributed greatly to Japan becoming a military power capable of carving out its own empire.
The inception of the Tokugawa Shogunate around 1600 would reduce the impact of foreign relations throughout Japanese society. This bulwark helped resist change and development in Japan, although it continued throughout the western world. Following two hundred years of self imposed seclusion from the rest of the world, the forceful re-entry of the foreigner brought about considerable change in Japan. While managing the foreign threat, there was also an imbalance of power in the current feudal system of the Tokugawa Shogunate. This imbalance created uncertainty for Japan and the imperialistic foreigners. This imbalance and uncertainty would lead to the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the emergence of the Meiji Restoration. However, to understand the transition between the current Shogunate government and the modernization through the Meiji Restoration, it is imperative to realize not only the necessity of modernization but also difficulties modernizing presented. To achieve modernization, Japan would have to abandon or modify various traditional cultural institutions and ideologies which were weakening the Japanese Nation.
During the Meiji Restoration, Japan transformed into a strong industrialized nation by adopting the Western political, cultural, and technological ideas. Japan was the “only non-Western country to industrialize in the nineteenth century and that, moreover, she did so in an extremely short time” (Sugiyama 1). Japan’s social, political, and economic aspects were all affected by the Western technologies to transform Japan into an industrialized nation (Wittner 1). By adopting the Western ideas during the Meiji Restoration, Japan has turned into a powerful industrialized nation by becoming an “international political player in the 1880s” (Wittner 1).
During cognitive development it is important that teachers allow time for students to have breaks in between classroom tasks such as recess and other extracurricular activities. Learning large amounts of material is easier for children to understand when it is taken in as chunks. Assign children with short tasks and switch from demanding activities to less demanding activities (Biehler & Snowman, 2000).
Because of the Meiji Restoration the Japanese society gained economic, military and political change and lost the chance to gain Religious and social equality. I chose this topic because the Japanese transformation from a backwards country into a modern day economic and military world power interested me because it was all done in 40 years. The Meiji restoration forced western civilizations to respect the new modern Japan.
Epstein, Richard. The case of the killer robot: stories about the professional, ethical and societal dimensions of computing. John Wiley and Sons. 1996.
Issac Asimov's I, Robot Asimov’s robots can be described as clumsy, hard-working, cost-efficient, soulless, strong, fast, obedient, human-made, a cleaner better breed, more human than man. Robots can be caring, gentle, self-aware, creative, intelligent and also evil, rebellious. Robots are made out of metal, plastic, aluminum, gears, bolts, wheels, sensors, memory chips, and other gadgets. TEXT STUDY Asimov’s book “I, Robot” is full of exciting short stories about human-robot relations. But the one story that really touched me was the first of the nine: Robbie.
If one strips the story to its generalities rather than specifics, it is easy to relate this to World War II through the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent actions. Japan had relatively recently entered onto the world stage and faced issues that plagued other youthful nations. Japan required expansion to feed its growing populace. The easies...
Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, allows a machine to function as if the machine has the capability to think like a human. While we are not expecting any hovering cars anytime soon, artificial intelligence is projected to have a major impact on the labor force and will likely replace about half the workforce in the United States in the decades to come. The research in artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly at an unstoppable rate. So while many people feel threatened by the possibility of a robot taking over their job, computer scientists actually propose that robots would benefit a country’s efficiency of production, allowing individuals to reap the benefits of the robots. For the advantage of all, researchers and analysts have begun to mend the past ideas of human-robot interaction. They have pulled inspiration from literary works of Isaac Asimov whom many saw as the first roboticist ahead of his time, and have also gotten ideas of scholarly research done by expert analysts. These efforts have began to create an idea of a work force where humans and robots work together in harmony, on a daily basis.
Robots Are Taking Over Humans Jobs In the Terminator film series, the Terminator is from a world controlled by robots. Technology got so advanced that Cyber Dyne Systems Skynet took over human-controlled robots and nuked the world. This story is impossible in reality, but robots should not be taken lightly in today’s world. Technology in the 21st century is getting more advanced every day.
7. Robots, Ethics & War. (n.d.). Center for Internet and Society. Retrieved November 10, 2013, from http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2010/12/robots-ethics-war
To conclude, robots could be the backbone of the society that will result in a technological revolution. Because of robots various characteristics that do not experience fear, nor exhaustion and they are precisely programmed, which make them able to help in case of need, housework, and factories production. Society needs to put the issue of robots into consideration to satisfy any shortage exists in the world.