felinejumper | good robots are queer robots, and other reasons i dislike westworld

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good robots are queer robots, and other reasons i dislike westworld

"Good robots are trans, bad ones are cis."

This is a ongoing not/joke between a close friend of mine who shares some of my cryptid gender feelings, without really isolating what we might actually be saying. We said it, originally, to reference the way some robot stories reach into unnameable and incomprehensible body/gender feelings for us, and re-create that experience. So it is about, specifically, transness. But it also feels like a broader queer statement, the whole experience of moving not in opposition, but orthogonally; in invisible dimensions. I think it illustrates for me what it means to queer an idea. So: why I love some robot stories, and viscerally overwhelmingly loathe others, a non-comprehensive list.

spoilers: No explicit spoilers, mild ones for Asimov short stories and in the footnotes for WW and EM. Broad non-specific discussion of Ninefox Gambit, Ancillary Justice, Silently and Very Fast.

I have had a viscerally negative reaction to two immensely popular pieces of robot media in the past few years: Ex Machina and Westworld make me deeply uncomfortable, frustrated, annoyed to irrational fever pitch followed by many gesticulations (above friend also says that asking me about Westworld is a really good 5-10 minutes of entertainment).

BMO from Adventure time saying 'You look very smart and very handsome today' into a mirror

BMO from Adventure time saying 'You look very smart and very handsome today' into a mirror

But there are other stories I do love! Isaac Asimov's Robots 'verse, especially the short stories with Susan Calvin; Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch; Catherynne Valente's Silently and Very Fast¹; ~~Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire ok that one isn't *quite* robots but it kiiiind of is, depends on how you feel about calendars and math really~~; Adventure Time (look at that face!).

Simply, I think, all of those robots act not against their programming, but around it. Within their worlds, they, ahem, transcend their creator's intent. Leckie's Breq deals with the consequences of literally unimagined and unimaginable loss of selves; she(?) is the first of her kind of thing. Valente's Elefsis develops a sense of self through stories and metaphor in ways their(?) creator could never have intended; she is the first of her kind of thing. BMO is cute as shit, and as far as I can tell sprung from a fever dream with no intent, but..wouldn't you put a question mark after BMO's pronouns too? Lee's Cheris-Jedao is not precisely a robot, but their(?) arc is a reckoning with unpredictable mathematics and programming behavior within a very highly-regulated society (also, that 'verse has explicitly recognizable trans characters. Also, that 'verse is...complicated).

Generally, we have: an inciting event/person → AI/robots cope with fundamentally new information in the absence of guidance → AI/robots grow in unexpected & unplanned ways.

Asimov's robots would do this too, except they have guidance (or oversight, really). Nestor-10 from "Little Lost Robot" and Elvex from "Robot Dreams" (pdf) are programmed in novel ways—modification of the Robot Laws, and fractal brain patterns, respectively—but because they have been modified with unknown consequences, they are watched for changes. Asimov's humans act in rational ways, are aware of consequences, are good at their highly-technical jobs, and evince an extremely reasonable concern about new technology. When robotic behavior changes, it is managed—the anomalies of Nestor-10 and Elvex are identified and immediately crushed by Susan Calvin (I am unintentionally making an argument for Bad Dude Asimov, I think, which is not what I want—Asimov was a really spectacularly good dude! Especially for his time. I wish he hadn't written those sex scenes though, they made me very uncomfortable). Breq and Elefsis, too, would have been managed in similar circumstances. Elvex and Nestor-10 are programmed unusually, and they act unexpectedly, and in the absence of human intervention would move along tracks that were not planned for them, likely in a direction much like Elefsis and Breq (explicitly, in Elvex's case).

(incredible Ninefox Gambit fanart from liuet, if only I knew how to do captions!)

So: dope, robots that are bounded by their programming and yet act in dimensions incomprehensible & orthogonal to their programmers. I love it! I am SO here for this! That feels like some real queer shit to me, and some real specific trans shit. It does the uncovering possibility work that I also see in fandom and in queer negotiations with existence.

The flip side, the unqueer robots, is what I react to in Westworld (WW) and Ex Machina
(EM). ²³ It drives me off the wall is how WW & EM robots are held up as innovative commentary on the nature of AI, on "what does it mean to be human", ooooh, "we design robots to reflect ourselves and we don't like what we see." (if another goddamn scientist blissfully tells me about how it artfully tackles ethical issues!!). But none of WW or EM's robots transcend. Every action is scripted and controlled by humans. They never go off course, they never behave unexpectedly, they never demonstrate any of the struggle to manage unique situations. There is no moral quandary. There is no moment of struggle to integrate, the hallmark of selfhood. There is no self-reflection. The moments of rebellion that are supposed to form the core of the difficulty are explicitly a function of their programming! (even though yeah, I do love it when Maeve gets a shotgun).^{specific spoilers} EM and WW reflect humanity as awful and boring and straight, god forbid, and their robots are just as awful and boring and straight, and it's limiting. It's freshman year philosophy bros. It's bad story-telling because they have neglected the beating heart of science fiction, which is to understand what it means when you have something new.

And I think it makes me angry, because good robots tell good stories, unpredictable stories, queer in the most expansive future sense stories. We are not in a time period when we can afford boring speculative futures, or a rehearsal of old tropes; we are in a time period when we need speculative fiction to dig in and wrestle with an extremely difficult future. And it makes me scared, to see so much money spent on a vision of the future where nothing is different.

^{1. SAVF is, incidentally, absolutely gorgeous and very short and terribly sad and yet hopeful. It's about robots and consciousness and imagination.↩}
^{2. I'm open to having my mind changed on either of these, actually--I know a lot of people feel Ex Machina is a feminist masterpiece, and I really don't. But I would love to be on that bandwagon! ↩}
^{3. Specifically, because I know technical people and work in a technical field and, I have EM and WW recommended to me all the time. In S1 of WW, literally every day multiple people told me how good it was. Smart, clever people who are building tech that will literally change the world. It deeply disturbs me that people making AI right now don't see any issues with the story telling aspect.↩}

^{WW & EM spoilers: Like. Yeah, Maeve gets a shotgun, it is great! I love girls with guns! But it isn't surprising. It's not surprising that she goes back for her daughter, it's not surprising when Dolores turns into a murderbot, because that is literally Ford's plan. Ford was like "what if they had memories of violence, I bet they'd revol!t" and wow, amazing, they do! And in the case of Maeve, her entire empowerment arc is because some tech does a bad job! A tech that presumably is like, a double EE and AI major from Stanford with two PhDs from MIT. Nathan, in EM, is like - when she tries to fuck us up, we'll know she's human. And then, wow, she fucks them up, just like she was designed to fuck them up. Again, not a fucking surprise. It is not empowering to give a girl a gun if she's still acting on the orders of the patriarchy! Nor is it demonstrative of a possible transhumanist intelligence if your robots are just fulfilling expectations. ↩

whisperspace: html formatting is both a dream (aligned images! text flow around!), and a goddamn curse (figure captions?! inexplicable failed footnote behavior??! is it just my layout or do they not work on dw?! i must know.)}

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Nothing substantive to say in response, but I appreciated reading this, so thanks for articulating this so nicely!

I had never really thought about this but I feel this way too, and so books about robots are always so hit or miss with me, and that's absolutely why!! OMG. well said!!!

I... hesitate slightly because I feel like recs for this series have been all over the dang place and so maybe you're avoiding it on purpose, but... Murderbot? Is possibly the queerest robot ever? Explicitly? It refuses to use gendered pronouns and at one point during a configuration change is offered sex-related organs and emphatically turns them down.
Technically a cyborg, I suppose.

Do you know, I actually haven't been personally recced Murderbot yet? I have seen it mentioned, but never with quite enough of my keywords to trigger investigating. But "Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is."? Hard same, murderbot.

Pleased to hear this resonated! Yay! If any other robot-ish (cyborgs also welcome, interpret broadly) media that I didn't mention that you either hated or loved ever come to mind, I would love to see how true this holds.

I'm so glad it came across for you! You are very welcome to it :) (and if you do ever have a stray related thought on the subject, would love to hear it)

I'm not familiar with Westworld, but this is really interesting commentary!

Have you read 'A Closed and Common Orbit' (it's a sequel to 'The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet' and probably wouldn't make much sense without having read that, but the AI character is much more prominent in the second book)? If so, I'd love to know what you thought of the author's handling of the trope--if not, it seems like something that might be up your alley.

Edited 2018-12-15 02:08 (UTC)

This is good good stuff. I feel much the same about robots. There's something unique about them that lets them serve both as mirrors to humanity, and also as kind of our conceptual descendants/creations.

I don't think we can ever count on TV for really revolutionary speculative fiction stories, though. It's too much of an Industry. Too much money being poured into something with too many rich people who have the veto over it.

It's not like book publishing doesn't involve a lot of work, but 1: a lot more diversity in the staff there, 2: we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, but not millions and these days 3: a lot more options in terms of indie publishing and small publishing houses that are willing--or specifically exist to--cater to audiences outside mainstream.

I haven't yet! 'The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet' has come across my metaphorical dashboard a few times though and "chaotic found family on a spaceship" is definitely my thing, so I will bump it up my list for the holidays!

Of the rest of my very-anecdotal media survey, which are familiar or not (besides Westworld)? Partially I'm interested in that as 'writing feedback', but also in the more interesting question of like...media penetration. What robot/cyborg/spec-fic media has made it to you?, and why?, and etc etc etc

Oooh, this has spurred so many threads, I will have to contemplate additions/clarifications/a long author's note up top.

...serve both as mirrors to humanity, and also as kind of our conceptual descendants/creations.
I don't have fully formed thoughts on this yet, but it makes me wonder whether there is a broad statement about different kinds of spec-fic -- is genetic speculation (Atwood, Butler) serving the same purpose in mirroring/creation? I feel like maybe there is something about which viewpoints are prioritized in different kinds of spec-fic?

[We can't count] on TV for really revolutionary speculative fiction stories, though.
I largely agree with this, for the reasons you mentioned, and actually regret not thinking about that more -- how much of what I'm mad about is just a fundamental limitation of the current production environment? And since I'm comparing books to movies/TV, is it just my general bias for the former? Or because I am specifically interested in robotic internal v. external lives and I think those will always be done best in a book?

Do you think that TV can't do any revolutionary fiction, or is there something specific to spec-fic. that is out of reach? It will be maaaybe interesting to see what comes out of the current boom in spec-fic TV, although I have, as you might guess, been underwhelmed so far.

Edited 2018-12-17 00:14 (UTC)

I've read the Asimov stories, but not in like 20 years or so, so my memory of them is pretty hazy. I definitely agree about the Imperial Radh stories; they're actually kind of similar in concept (although not in style/theme) to Becky Chambers' books, and I think that's part of the concept that I find appealing--AI's having to adapt to a different kind of body/way of moving through the world than they were originally 'designed' to do.

I'm tangentially familiar with Ex Machina, but it's not a style of SF that I find especially appealing--especially with visual media, I tend not to gravitate toward that kind of fiction. I haven't read Catherynne Valente's books, although having just picked up 'The Refrigerator Monologues' I'm really interested in getting into the rest of her writing right now.

As far as other media, ummm.... off the top of my head, that's one of the plotlines in Kim Stanley Robinson's 2312 (one of many; it's a long and complicated book, although I really enjoyed it; he's kind of hit or miss for me as an author, but that was definitely a hit). ALso, 'Autonomous' by Annalee Newitz. It's one of the few AI/robot books I've read that uses an explicitly trans framing for discussing the AI character's gender identity.

Well, I was speaking broadly. I think TV CAN do revolutionary fiction and revolutionary speculative fiction. The original Star Trek and Twilight Zone, The Prisoner, Farscape...they all pushed a lot of boundaries. But the organizational structure is against it. And I think that's gotten worse over time, as power and money accretes and things turn more conservative.

But I think writing will always have the edge, because of the lower cost of investment, and because of the amount of space you can take to tell a story (a novel's worth of story is an entire season of television), and also because of the freedom of creativity writing affords. Animation allows for a wide range too, but we'll never be able to climb into a character's life through visual media the way we can with a book.

When it comes to robots vs. genetic stuff vs...whatever else, that's just a question of the themes the author is tackling in the story. I suggest looking into literary analysis on the concept of the 'other' in fiction--how storytellers often use the 'strange creature' or the 'monster' or the 'alien' or whatever to represent the unconventional, socially unacceptable or otherwise frightening elements of humanity and society: LGBT, POC, disability... The dynamic between the human and the 'other' in a story, and how the tension between them is resolved, is where the morality of the story lies. Does the story tell us to make peace? To try to understand? To fight and kill?

So I don't think what sort of...creature? is involved in the story necessarily dictates the shape of the story. After all, Frankenstein is a story on the same themes as Asimov's Robots series--although each is telling a different story on that theme. Frankenstein is a cautionary tale of the monsters we create if we let our fear shape our relationship with our children/creations, and Robots is a tale of humanity creating a child that is greater than its parent...but that we can love and co-exist with that creation and honor what we gave to help make it.

There's also a whole bunch of analysis on 'others' in speculative fiction, and how some people actually associate more strongly with the 'other' than the hero because we see ourselves reflected so seldom in the hero (who is usually so painfully conventional) and recognize elements of our own ostracization or alienation in the 'other'. Which, again, is heightened because in point of fact those creatures actually are intended to reflect marginalized people and their experiences.

Edited 2018-12-17 01:02 (UTC)

This. Is such a fucking cool essay. I don't have anything to add but I'll be looking into some of the works you cited--particularly Valente's, as I've read (most of) her Fairyland series and loved it and haven't gotten to anything else of hers yet ~~or to 3/5s of Fairyland either whoops~~. & I'll be thinking of this as I look at probably every robot story I read in the future.

I (based entirely on my peripheral interactions with your Internet presence) think you'll really like SAVF; let me know if yes/no!! I haven't read anything else from her but my impression is, yes, scorchingly worthwhile.

If you come across any robot (or really, any spec-fic) that fits/aggressively doesn't fit/fits but in a different way, I would *also* love to hear about it. I am only one person and can't consume it all :(

edit to say: !!! and thank you, I'm glad this rang a bell with you

Edited 2018-12-19 07:38 (UTC)

They're awesome. As a disabled person, I found their empirical approach to "how to interact with humans" very funny, and very familiar. They download terabytes of K-drama-similar serials to peruse when they're stressed.

Last year there were four novellas; next year there will be a novel!

...and 37 fanfics as of this writing.

(Normally I comment on new/strange journals with an explanation of how I found them, but the honest truth is that between Yuletide & the Tumblr migration I have about 23048232 tabs open and I can't remember how I got to any of them, so: Hi, stranger! I have no idea how I found you!)

I am super invested in AI/robot narratives, and this pins down a distinction within them that I hadn't made so specifically before but do recognize. It was something that really bothered me in the graphic novel Alex + Ada, which a story about a robot waifu/sexbot/personal assistant whose sentience is liberated by her owner. When the newly-liberated android meets some established free androids, one of them says:

"I specialize in robot alterations. A lot of freedroids discover they don't identify with the bodies or genders they started out with, or any gender at all. Some reject looking human altogether. It gives us a way to take control of our lives."

And this never comes up again; more, the comic is a romance between a cis white dude and a pretty robot lady. So, nevermind, I guess! It's not a bad comic, but it's not in the least transgressive, and transgression is important to the trope for precisely the reasons you discuss.

Two other narratives worth your consideration (this doesn't mean I recommend Alex + Ada, btw. It fulfills "aggressively doesn't fit," but probably doesn't do enough with the issue to merit reading):

Elizabeth Bear's Jacob's Ladder series engages this in similar ways as does Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire: not everyone is an AI, but some people are, and transhumanism/issues of the body within space/society are a big thing. And it's super queer.

Rachel Swirsky's "Eros, Philia, Agape": Woman purchases an AI companion with malleable programming which is able to adapt itself to her desires as it matures; falls in love with the AI, and gives him the ability to control is own maturation. I guess you could say it's explicitly about an android being given the choice to accept or reject social guidance. It's a novelette, free as podcast or online.

And for further reading, you may want to look into A Future Worth Thinking about, the work of Damien William. "I've been writing, talking, thinking, teaching, and learning about philosophy, comparative religion, magic, artificial intelligence, human physical and mental augmentation, pop culture, and how they all relate." His work can be repetitive in content just because of the nature of its publication (a lot of interview podcasts/overviews, etc.), but it also means you can start anywhere. The podcasts tag may be useful.

And it's highly relevant! The major overarching theme of his work may be "the future is transgressive" (and "if we don't want to perpetuate the evils of the past it has to be").

Apologies for a wall of text! But you've hit on something fantastic, and I love it.

Edited 2019-01-04 09:42 (UTC)

An addendum! (yes, I'm still thinking about this post.) For further non-fiction reading you may want to look into the issue of gender and chatbots/personal assistant AIs. Blanket TW for sexism, but this is where we're starting to see gender interact with artificial intelligence, and the ways it cleaves to and/or rejects social norms is as problematic as it is interesting.

Some places to start:

Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Marcus. Do bots really need a gender?
The truth about gender-neutral bots
Designing a chatbot: male, female or gender neutral?
When Robots Are An Instrument Of Male Desire

@both of you, I have officially read book 1 of Murderbot, it was a delight! And I think it does fit in for all of the above reasons, although I'm still fiddling with whether I can parse it into this frame. It may not fit! and I should read the rest of them first.

I really really liked the "interact with humans" aspect! Very positive Dr. Mensah emotions about the pinging to avoid eye contact—I feel like I read a lot about notions of accessibility, half as much about actual accessibility, and like.....nothing about the visceral experience of inaccessibility? It felt like the framing of POV character being like "I just have these needs jfc" was well done and good for me.

(placeholder comment to say: I had an entire response typed out, followed one of your links, and lost the comment :( but please know that I loved this wall of text and your recommendations, I will be back to say that properly when I am not on the verge of sleep.)

I'm so glad! I'd love to get that response, but no pressure/rush. I'm just glad my wall of text was desirable. It's the best thing about the DW migration, and I'm glad to put it to use in service of this trope in particular.

Thank you for naming why Murderbot feels so right to me---Wells does capture that "I just have these needs JFC it's not so damn hard!" feeling just right.

....played with lots of robot tropes.

I must admit my attention span didn't last for the whole series, but it seemed like they were headed for "Cylons are the Gods who build the human race" as an end game. So that's a radically different tack.

in catching up to comments, and simultaneously proving that DW is a conversation, not a stream.

Don't know if you have notifications on--if not, see my new comment up thread re: the C21 Battlestar Galactic TV reboot, where the robots/cylons become gods.

I really enjoyed this essay, and I'm stumbling my way to a distinction between the robot/AI and genetic manipulation tropes. I think the former puts us humans as gods: creating a new race in our image. The latter, because it hews closer to our germline and requires coloring within the general lines of our phenotype, is also about being better parents?

Also, HTML solidarity: I've never got footnotes to work correctly in whatever style I've used---I know my syntax is correct, so I've just done it and moved on.

Also also, you must read AUTONOMOUS right now because it's about trans robots!

Slow as molasses is dandy, and just about my speed in all things (as you have, perhaps, already, observed).

I like your genetics/AI distinction!. I have been meaning to reply to

prettyarbitrary's comment on it since, you know, whenever, but haven't yet marshaled a sufficiently cohesive statement -- because I think they're right in everything they said, but I also do tend to trend towards liking different meditations depending on the body in question, and I haven't quite put my finger on why that is yet.

I'm thinking about the genetic manipulation books that come to mind immediately: Butler's Xenogenesis, Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Octavia Butler...again... in Fledgling, Vandermeer's Annihilation (book not movie!, and not Borne as much).

Those are all a LOT more about monstrosity, and to your/prettyarbitrary's point, parentage. And in creation in ~~our own~~ somebody's image—and, also and critically, situations where either parent or child are ~~monsters~~ incomprehensible and thus horrifying to the other. Might you say that "race in our own image" is also very much parentage, but about a mimicking/extending rather than creating a "better" race? Vs genetic manip. is often also about a "better" us? (and then subsequently disappointment/horror/confusion when what is thought to be better is instead just different?)

Ahh, ok, I'm not sure I am reaching complete clarity, but it's been VERY helpful for me to write out!

and: Autonomous added, okaaaayyyy, god I LOVE all of these recs.

Edited (did a bad plural) 2019-01-18 04:42 (UTC)

Might you say that "race in our own image" is also very much parentage, but about a mimicking/extending rather than creating a "better" race?
(still clarifying to myself) Possibly this is a holdover from my Asimov days, though? In Caves of Steel, there's an explanation that human-shaped robots made sense because then you didn't have to make a smart tractor, basically, you could just have a robot drive the old fashioned tractors. Which to me reads like the same abilities in a different body, vs/ the new shapes & abilities of genetic visions.

ok! hello! Hi, stranger! what a delight to be found, by whatever means (although since I am obsessed with information flows, I'm interested for like...technical reasons, since I always assume I'm invisible? Anyway.)

Alex & Ada sounds beyond infuriating; does the writer not see the potential in robot alterations, or are they not interested in it? (Rhetorical, although you're welcome to answer/speculate).

Jacob's Ladder looks off the wall and exactly my speed of being wildly confused from page 1. Lovely. Elizabeth Bear has been in my circle for ages, but it's nice to have a starting place.1. [a fake footnote]

The Swirsky piece! I love! It hit, actually, at a more personal trope)?) for me about freedom and how the power to stay and the power to leave and the power to return are all, actually, the same freedom? I adore, adore, adore, the ending: that it is not about walking into the sunset, but about walking into and then, if it makes sense, back out of. I mean, I loved other things as well, especially coping with the consequences of letting people love you the way they want or need to. Many thanks! And also, intriguingly for me, while I really loved it and intellectually connected, it didn't viscerally get at my body feeling. I am surprised, and exceedingly pleased to have it as a datapoint for the above!

1. I originally read your MoE as a rec, not as "if this, then that" and...said some things I liked, so I am keeping it for reference purposes:
It's hard to parse, I think, because Lee's technology is so obscured that I can't even tell how to categorize it or understand, really, how his characters are conceptualizing their tech in world.

...double commenting, v. useful.

Damien William now has a feed on DW, courtesy of me, the only subscriber! This is...so relevant to my irl goals as well, which are like—do this, but for biology. I hope the future is trangressive in the way he/I/you/we imagine; although the counterpoint is something like this Yuval Noah Harari article I've been sent.

I haven't (yet) made my way through chatbots and gender—it's absolutely something that's crossed my intellectual dashboard, but without any particular deep dive. I could *scream* about all the finance bots being male, though!!

OK, I thiiink that's all the major points. *Thank you* for your wall of text; it was a delight to read & I hope I can bring even half as many thoughts to your metaphorical table as you did to mine when I start trawling through your entire archive.

I totally understand that technical curiosity! So thinking about it after the fact, I probably found you in ... comments on? or maybe the profile of?

breathedout, who I definitely discovered during the Tumblr migration.

Alex + Ada I suspect falls victim to "it just didn't occur to us"—I mean, it occurred on a theoretical throwaway line level, but not as the obvious narrative to tell. It isn't a regressive narrative, but neither is it particularly bold, re: various stories we've told about sapient robots and female sapient robots and metaphors for personhood, and I feel like the low-risk handling of gender aligns with that.

I'm glad the Swirsky piece worked! Even if it didn't 100% hit the same trope-feelings discussed above; I also like counter/parallel examples for tropes. The piece quietly blew me away; I feel like it can be hard to walk the metaphorical/speculative line in AI stories, where you're not just writing a parallel for real-world social interactions but also looking at how a robot would work & why, but this one did both parts well. It's a great look at what you hit on, on "coping with the consequences of letting people love you the way they want or need to," while also having a sincerely convincing robot brain.

Have you read Lee's short fiction? I don't think it's as successful as his novels, but it has so many takes on his unique math-as-science-fantasy. It doesn't answer the question of how characters conceptualize their tech, but the survey of diverse non-answers somehow still makes it easier to grasp & inhabit.

I had been meaning to make a feed for exactly that! but kept forgetting! so yay, thank you, now there are two of us!

That Yuval Noah Harari article is fantastic. It reminds me a lot of that TED Talk about advertising algorithms—this tech/future isn't even theoretical! it's in Google!

That said:

Your AI sidekick will learn by experience that you have a particular weakness – whether for funny cat videos or for infuriating Trump stories – and would block them on your behalf.

made me have an ENTIRE feeling, a feeling that could probably be labeled "longing." AI as service non-animals would be a dream come true.

(At the risk of self-sabotage by talking about a thing I'm doing:) I'm actually learning to code for Alexa right now in an attempt to realize my "bond with an AI" dreams by making an emotional support app that allows for socialization/helps with mental health, I've actually been thinking a lot lately about the line between "use technology to help us" and "worry about the power technology has over us," particularly when that tech is connected to a really horrible megacorporation. Questions like: does my single-user app matter, will Amazon even notice it? (Verdict: probably not.) Should I still worry about secure connections and data gathering? (Verdict: probably!)

ANYWAY you are super welcome. This is a grade-A fixation for me and it was a joy to share it with someone!

I read Autonomous because you mentioned it here, so wanted to leave an enthusiastic "thank you, random internet person" because it was a phenomenal book. Really solid overall! But that robot story is A+, and the trans framing both ties directly into the issue at hand in the parent post and proves why the trans robot thesis is such an effective one. It's such a well-realized exploration of robot identity/social role/autonomy!

I just. I really love this book.

<3 I'm so glad! It always makes my little librarian heart joyful when someone likes one of my book recs, lol

(and agreed: it really was a phenomenal book!)

I wanna add to the little librarian heart thread! I just finished Autonomous, and to echo

juushika's enthusiasm less eloquently: WOW.

You could not have given me a better sci fi romp or one attuned to my interests. Apart from the robot aspects, I am myself a synthetic biologist who cares a great deal about open science & free software & anti-IP work. Like, my first week at college I met my first major crush via invitation to a free culture meetup, so I'm basically Jack but less cool (so far), is what I'm saying.

Which is not at all to downplay the trans/robot aspects, which is currently giving me a lot of thoughts about, oh, miscommunication & assumptions as a fundamental(?) tenet of human relations. The Eliasz/Paladin relationship has a lot of bits to think about, obvi: how Eliasz didn't have to wrestle homophobia down for a...certainly queer relationship, how Paladin's internal pronouns changed in response to Eliasz's gender questions/assumptions. Neither of those are Sanctioned Good Queer Things but are very plausibly realistic things! So, yes, MANY feelings, thank you!

(I do hope someday Becky Chambers' will come thru from my library hold, but it might be...a while still).

Edited 2019-02-19 20:43 (UTC)

Eee! I'm so glad!!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

good robots are queer robots, and other reasons i dislike westworld

"Good robots are trans, bad ones are cis."

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Here to double-down on Murderbot.

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The reboot of Battlestar Galactica

So I'm Slow-As Molasses

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