Thoughts on Robots in the Dawn

June 16, 2020

Robots in the Dawn is the best of Asimov in the Galactic Empire series. This is why I can’t get joy out of watching simple Earth political TV: nothing is as intricate and as robust a mirror on existing human civilization. Even though it originally spawned out of an echo of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, as one podcast I heard last winter pointed out, Asimov’s model of the world has broadened astronomically throughout his compositions.

It illuminates many things about the contemporary world, for one: the truth is not always convenient: what decision makers and politicians agree upon as an answer may be enough to keep the world at its equilibrium (in this case, which model gets to become the next pioneers of the galaxy - surprise: Earth and humanism), but it’s the untold, even unpleasant, conclusions among the few that drives the technologies that would shape history, even though how it’s done may be unclear to the first few possessors.

Focusing on this wild ride has been a great exercise in my thinking, even though I never get the answers right -- never has the final reveal been obvious to me, the rules of foreshadowing don’t apply. The stakes are the highest: to gamble on knowledge, trust, and understanding of a whole foreign planet, is nothing like gambling for political power here or negotiating a business deal. The untold rules of how to talk to someone under stress (I can still feel the oppressive anger each time out of a million that someone is fed up with the investigator, which is good because I usually lose my grip right at the beginning of a conflict, without feeling the simple determination to just see the case through).

Back to robots: they even define classes of people - those who know how to give orders, even to an army of 50, and those who can’t. Even as a pacifist, you got to fight for your cause, and admitting that you’re the leader (not necessarily master) also requires you to “communicate” to your subsidiaries. Not everyone has clear principles of priority like robots -- could I calculate for them? Do I ever think 2+ orders of consequences beyond what I say? Is this the meaning of social engineering? This book is a reaffirmation that words that I initiate do have power. Change = delta ability, after all, the ability to influence.

Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me something through holding me back from publishing articles or releasing music. Maybe it’s saying: I can do much better than theoretical stuff. Maybe I can create the human-shaped robot. The illusion producing light material. The disinfecting mechanism that eliminates all common diseases. The psychological probe. Functional designs that calms your nerves and increase rationality. I could be an inventor.

(I should analyze why the space planets are ideal)