Challenge 1009 Response discusses...

Robots

with Ron Sanders

Challenge 1009 appears in this issue.

[Ron Sanders] “The Robot Says Go” is about the frustration of technology-controlled human drives. Along with myriad other interactive inventions, traffic lights are “robots” that ordain our behavior. They have no souls; they are in no way responsible for “igniting road rage.” The passion comes solely from overeager drivers: man versus machine. Human nature. The title is repeated four times in the refrain to connote blood pressure as the “jocks” break their “gates” It’s all just metaphorical fun.

[Don Webb] Quite so, Ron. Traffic will be fun as long as those steaming-hot road jockeys obey the rules of the road as cited visually by the soulless traffic lights.

Indeed, readers may interpret the refrain from the drivers’ viewpoint and sense their pounding blood pressure. But wouldn’t a single green light, where the robot says, “Go,” suffice to release the drivers’ pent-up eagerness to floor pedal to the metal?

Once is a statement; twice is emphasis. Beyond that, readers’ imaginations may wander and even take the robot’s point of view. For example: What if the soulless robot is captured by hackers bent on sabotage? Or what if artificial intelligence has inadvertently given robots free will and, thereby, a soul? The robots would be capable of sin or, at least, maliciously wrecking traffic with a four-way green light.

Granted, robots may be depicted as artifacts of contemporary social realism. However, in the mid-20th century, Isaac Asimov foresaw that science fiction would emancipate robots, so to speak, as human surrogates. For that reason, he invented the Three Laws of Robotics, to give robots and their human-like descendants, androids, a morality to go with their souls. Ever since, science fiction has taken his caution to heart.