Human Suspicion of Technology
The opening story is about a robot named Robbie, coincidentally enough, who enjoys a fantastic relationship with young girl named Gloria whom he has been programmed to essentially nanny. Gloria is soon the only member of the household that actually seems to be okay with the presence of a robot in the family. Gloria’s mother schemes to get her husband to go the whole nine yards and remove the machine from the equation; a decision which the expected emotionally wrenching effect on the innocent. This opening sets the stage for a theme that Asimov and others will constantly return to in stories about not just robots, but all new technological advancement: a seemingly hard-wired resistance constructed upon emotional rather than logical fear and suspicion about what exact role technology will play in altering our own future.
The “Sentience” of Robots
Asimov’s stories are science fiction in the truest sense of the word: the science is integral to the fiction. At one point Asimov writes ‘‘Inside the thin platinum-plated ‘skin’ of the globe was a positronic brain, in whose delicately unstable structure were enforced calculated neuronic paths which imbued each robot with what amounted to a pre-natal education.” Of course the average person would probably be so lost by “enforced calculated neuronic paths” that they completely miss the significance of “what amounted to a pre-natal education” so the attempt to explain the fear of robots as a special kind of fear of technology probably doesn’t hold. What does hold is that this is an essential passage in Asimov’s construction of rules by which robots had to abide, sure, but—more importantly—those writing about robots had to abide. Asimov was stimulated to create his famous Three Laws of Robotics partially in response to the fact that robots operating without these constraints in entertainment media of all sorts had become little more than killing machines spinning out of control. Asimov had to find a way to contain the creative danger of robots having no control mechanism with the narrative of danger of emasculating their threat altogether. His solution covered both the narrative and thematic spheres: make robots more dangerous intellectually by giving them something approaching an actual brain and give readers and entirely new reason to fear them.
The Subjugation of the Robot Class
Asimov also found another way to try reducing the fear of a robot nation rising in revolt. Prior to I, Robot, their most well-known fictional constructs were the android double of Maria created by the evil scientist in Metropolis and the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz. The exact purpose that robots might one day serve was unclear and ambiguous; great fuel for firing suspicion of technology. In the wake of I, Robot, media representations of robots made their overarching purpose in our world crystal clear: they would be here to serve us as slaves without a soul and employees without the need for a paycheck.
