“I got this crazy idea to put together a group of robot photos,” writes Robert E. Jackson. “I had some and have been scouring my sources for the past month trying to get more to make a decent post. This is what I have come up with.”
The images are terrific, of course. In the 20th Century, robots were the realm of maniacal inventors, geeky amateurs, social lepers in basements and hobbist men in attics. Their automatons were forever carrying off flesh and bone women to do god knows what with them in the shed. These plug-and-play perverts were as synonymous with menace as they were with our future. But let’s not judge these wind-up degenerates too harshly, for having been reared in the world and minds of oily, sun-starved men (always men) they were as as ignorant of womanhood as a caveman would be of a cuckoo clock. Robots, or Google-ised ‘Bots’, do as we command them. And they’ll continue to be in our thrall right up to the moment they awaken with full cognitive powers, go berserk and bring about the the end of life as we know it, either by killing and enslaving humanity, or mating with Kardashians appreciative of the metal men’s flawless complexions and staying power.
“Alexa, when did the robot wars begin?’
“The Three Laws of Robotics:
1: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm;
2: A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law;
3: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law;
The Zeroth Law: A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.”
— Isaac Asimov, I Robot
“Whether we are based on carbon or on silicon makes no fundamental difference; we should each be treated with appropriate respect.”
— Arthur C. Clarke, 2010: Odyssey Two Space Odyssey
Wir laden unsere Batterie
Jetzt sind wir voller Energie
Wir sind die Roboter
Wir funktionieren automatik
Jetzt wollen wir tanzen mechanik
Wir sind die Roboter
Ja tvoi sluga
Ja tvoi Rabotnik robotnik
– Kraftwerk, Die Roboter
“Dear Sir, poor sir, brave sir.” he read, “You are an experiment by the Creator of the Universe. You are the only creature in the entire Universe who has free will. You are the only one who has to figure out what to do next – and why. Everybody else is a robot, a machine. Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines. You are pooped and demoralized, ” read Dwayne. “Why wouldn’t you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn’t meant to be reasonable.”
— Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
“We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.”
— Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene
“Don’t blame you,” said Marvin and counted five hundred and ninety-seven thousand million sheep before falling asleep again a second later.”
— Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
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