Asimov, Isaac Robot 06 Robots & Empire
Asimov, Isaac Robots and Aliens 1 Changeling
Lowell Elizabeth Bracia Maxwell Jesienny kochanek tom 1
Anderson Joan Wester Anielskie drogi
Monitor_Ubezpieczeniowy_nr_25
Einstein Albert Relativity
śÂw. Augustyn Wyznania
Analizowanie budowy, fizjologii i patofizjologii narzć du śźucia
J. SZTUMSKI WstćÂp do metod i technik badaśÂ spośÂecznych
Cassel Emily Absolwentka
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a force of nature, beyond our control, immutable. We think it is pointless to
do anything but accept them, deal with the world that includes them.
But this is not our only choice. I say again, the Three Laws are a human
invention. They are based in human thought and human experience, grounded in
the human past. The Laws are, in theory at least, no less susceptible to
examination and no more immutable in form than any other human invention--the
wheel, the spaceship, the computer. All of these have been
changed--or supplanted--by new acts of creativity, new inventions.
We can look at each of these things, see how they are made--and see how we
have changed them, see how we update them, adjust them to suit our times.
So, too, if we choose, can we change the Three Laws.
There was a collective gasp from the audience, shouts from the back of the
room, a storm of boos and angry cries. Fredda felt the shouts and cries as if
they were so many blows struck down on her body. But she had known this was
coming. She had braced herself for it, and she responded.
No! she said. This is not our way. You were all invited here to join in an
intellectual discussion. How can we tell ourselves that we are the most
-advanced society in the history of human civilization, if the mere suggestion
of a new idea, a mild challenge to the orthodoxy, turns you into a mob? You
are responding as if my words were an assault on the religion you pretend not
to have. Do you truly believe that the Three Laws are preordained, some sort
of magical formula woven into the fabric of reality? That got at them.
Spacers prided themselves on their rationality. At least most of the time.
There were more shouts, more cries, but at least some of the audience seemed
ready to listen. Fredda gave them another moment to settle down and then
continued.
The Three Laws are a human invention, Fredda said again. And as with all
human creations, they are a reflection of the time and the place where they
were first made. Though far more advanced in many respects, the robots we use
today are in their essentials identical to the first true robots made untold
thousands of years ago. The robots we Spacers use today have brains whose
basic design has remained unchanged from the days before humanity first
entered space. They are tools made for a culture that had vanished before the
first of the great underground Cities of Earth were built, before the first
Spacers founded Aurora.
I know that sounds incredible, but you need not take my word for it. Go look
for yourself. If you research the dimmest recesses of the past, you will see
it is so. Do not send your robots to find out for you. Go to your data panels
and look for yourself. The knowledge is there. Look at the world and the time
in which robots were born. You will see that the Three Laws were written in a
very different time from ours.
You will find repeated references to something called the Frankenstein
Complex. This in turn is a reference to an ancient myth, now lost, wherein a
deranged magician-scientist pulled parts from the dead bodies of condemned
criminals and put them back together, reanimating the rotting body parts to
create a much-feared monster. Some versions of the myth report the monster as
actually a kind and gentle soul; others describe the monster as truly fierce
and murderous. All versions agree that the monster was feared and hated by
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practically everyone. In most variants of the story, the creature and its
creator are destroyed by a terrorized citizenry, who learn to be on the
lookout for the inevitable moment when the whole story would be told again,
when another necromancer would rediscover the secret of bringing decayed flesh
back to life.
That monster, ladies and gentlemen, was the popular mythic image of the robot
at the time when the first actual robots were built. A thing made out of
rotted, decayed human flesh, torn from the bodies of the dead. A perverted
thing born with all the lowest and most evil impulses of humanity in its soul.
The fear of this imaginary creature, superimposed on the real-life robots, was
the Frankenstein Complex. I know it will be impossible to believe, but robots
were seen not as utterly trustworthy mechanical servants, but as so many
potential menaces, fearful threats. Men and women would snatch up their
children and run away when robots--true robots, with the Three Laws ingrained
in their positronic brains--came close.
More mutterings of disbelief from the audience, but they were with her
now, enthralled by the bizarre and ancient world she was describing. She was
telling them of a past almost beyond their imagining, and they were
fascinated. Even Kresh, there in the front row, seemed to have lost some of
his ferocity.
There is more, Fredda said. There is much more that we need to understand
about the days when the Laws were written. For the first true robots were
built in a world of universal fear and distrust, when the people of Earth
found themselves organized into a handful of power blocs, each side armed with
enough fearsome weapons to erase all life from the planet, each fearing one of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
