1 Year After Seeing CHAPPiE, and Finding Common Ground

I saw CHAPPiE on April 16, 2015. It was a Thursday.

Ya see, I remember the exact date I saw it! It was after an important day in my life. Anyway…

I still think about this film from time to time, even after just seeing it once. It is unlike any other robot film I’ve ever seen. Dark and gritty, and enchanting, and inspiring and hopeful.

I really want a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack of CHAPPiE, but so far they are available separately. That sucks, and I want it. (Don’t we all want too much?). Other movies got it, so why not CHAPPiE? But seriously, though...

I’m sorry, guys. I promised you a review of this movie and I never delivered. I am truly sorry about that. I hate it when I say I’ll do something and then I don’t—especially when it comes to stuff like this. That’s how it was with the RoboCop 2014 movie, another review I didn’t deliver. I still want to do it.

Do you guys still want my reviews of either or both films?

Maybe if I get enough demand—even 3 or 4 requests for those—then I’ll consider doing it after all. I still want to, but maybe my motivation to do it is low. I don’t know how many people are actually following or reading Cybernetic Dreams.

I’ve just been so busy, but…

Maybe it’s time I commit to visiting other blogs about robots and robotics. I don’t know enough people in the robotics field. Or anyone there, for that matter. Although, I really like talking about robots in entertainment as well: films, TV, literature. Even artwork.

I want to share what I think. I want to share how I feel, what I experience, every time I see a robot or a humanoid robot in a TV ad, a movie or a TV show. Not every single thing, but at least… the ones that can inspire us to find common ground, hmm?

Cybernetic Dreams is one way I can start. In addition, I should search elsewhere to communicate my thoughts, too. I dunno, it could be my severe introversion speaking. It could be my fear of becoming so vulnerable, even on the internet. Those trolls can be everywhere.

But I am strong. I can handle a little vulnerability. If I say it, and believe it, then I can.

I know I can make a difference. I just have to stop hiding.

THE BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH AND MY ATTACHEMENT TO ELECRTONIC DEVICES (PHONE AND COMPUTER)

It’s too late. I’ve named them.

I am attached to my Windows 7 PC. I am also attached to my Android smartphone.

Am I emotionally attached to them?

I can say, “yes.”

When your electronic devices help you out in so many ways, you value them like you would a friend (at least I do). I use my computer for my writing work, including personal writing projects, as well as typing for this blog and my others, plus research and some entertainment.  My Android smartphone has saved me a lot of trouble; I checked email in a pinch, the weather forecast on occasion, and even typed up some documents on it using the WPS Office Suite app for Android.

I hate to think of when I may need to replace my phone or my computer.

It’s too late. I’ve named them. I’ve named my PC and I’ve named my Android phone. Or rather, I’ve given them nicknames. And once I’ve started doing that, I refer to them in pronouns.  Not for my phone so much, but I refer to my computer as “him” and “he” whenever I mention to a family member that “He’s scheduled for his weekly scan” or “He needs to update before he shuts down for the day.”

On May 6th approximately 3:00pm, my computer experienced the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. This was first unprovoked one ever in my life (the first one was because my cat stepped on the power switch and cut off its power without warning).

I was scared for him. I was scared for my computer. Did I do something wrong? Is there a virus? What was it? Why is this happening now?

After a bit of time I realized it was because of something I did after all. While I had him on Sleep Mode and meant to return to him but didn’t, he would be in Sleep Mode for hours and hours.  For nearly a month, I’d rarely shut him off. Sometimes when he is on I have several applications open, or do three tasks within the two hours I’d be able to do research or typing. Then I’d have to put him on Sleep Mode again when I left my bedroom to take care of my new dog or eat a meal. I wanted my computer to be ready for me at a minute’s notice.

And unfortunately, this may have fried a couple of his circuits.

I took him for granted. I don’t want to do that anymore. I am now gentle to him by keeping only two applications open at once, three maximum. If I am on the Internet, I should close the applications I don’t need open at the time. And, I need to limit the number of tabs I have on my browser because that might have overwhelmed him too.

Listen to me. Saying my computer is overwhelmed. As if he gets stressed out and has feelings.

… Sigh…    (◢д◣；)     

As for my Android smartphone, I do often worry about if the apps it runs takes up enough of its RAM, and if battery power is affected by which apps are active at the time. Lately I’ve been turning my phone off less often, and maybe every 6 to 8 days I turn him off and charge the battery while he rests (there I go AGAIN, talking like I should be considerate about its fatigue). I really should schedule that every two batter charging sessions, (so every third), I need to turn the phone off and charge the battery that way. I can stand to be without my phone for a few hours.  I’d feel very naked without my phone in my pocket, though.

Wouldn’t you, though?

***

So how many of you also give your devices nicknames?  It’s not a crazy thing to do, in my opinion. It can simply mean we value these devices more than make-up and designer clothes, or pairs of shoes.  Who names shoes? A device may be given a nickname because of the multiple ways it helps humans.  It may even discourage from unnecessary premature replacement.  (Here that, iPhone users?).

So give it a try.  It’s not a crazy thing to do. Others may believe it is silly to think it’s okay to refer to your phone or computer by name (as long as you don’t call your computer by its identification name!). Well, screw them. As for me, I’m just showing my high appreciation of the technology that I love. Is that so wrong?

BotCon 2014, My First BotCon

I may have not said it so explicitly, but…I am a fan of Transformers.

When my sister and I found out there was going to be a BotCon in Pasedena this year, we decided we would go during the General Admission days Saturday and Sunday. 

We’ve been fans of Transformers for one year.  June 2013 we started watching Transformer’s Prime.  Then September we started watching Transformers Armada.  Starting in mid-April we’ve caught several good episodes of the classic 1984 Transformers cartoon on its second season.  We love all of these shows.  We haven’t finished watching the entirety of all three of them, but we will.  We now have seen all three Michael Bay Transformers movies and are at this moment giddily looking forward to Transformers: Age of Extinction—no matter what others will say.  It’s Transformers.  Why not.

I think it’s safe to say we aren’t noobs to the franchise anymore.

So we went to the Pasedena BotCon 2014 at the Pasedena Convention Center.  We didn’t know what to look for—we aren’t collectors of the Transformers toys—so upon entering the Exhibit Hall, we were quite lost on what to do.  It is very different from going to an anime convention.  The majority of items sold and displayed there is the Transformers toys, but there were other cool things too.  There were artists who displayed and sold their fan art.  There was a Transformers Art competition.  IDW Publishing was selling their Transformers comic books at their booth. The writers and artists of The Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye and The Transformers: Robots In Disguise attended the Exhibit hall and sat at tables for fans to meet them and possibly buy their artwork.  James Roberts (writer of The Transformers: MTMTE) and John Barber (writer of The Transformers: RID) were there.  A video game demo was set up for Transformers Universe (the designs of the characters are reminiscent of Transformers Prime).

The panels were held at the Conference Rooms at another building within the Pasedena Convention Center.  Sis and I went to several of the panels in the course of the two General Admission days at BotCon.  It didn’t leave a whole lot of time to absorb everything that was in the Exhibit Hall.  We needed to eat and use the restroom too; if we wanted to enjoy ourselves, we needed to take care of ourselves too, and at least drink water and eat a snack if not a lunch. 

My personal favorite panel at BotCon was “James Roberts: Storyteller.”  I absolutely love the TF:MTMTE comic books; it was such a treat to hear him tell his fans about what was behind the scenes in creating the story for the comic book. There was a nice long Q and A session. Unfortunately I came up with a question to ask soon after the panel was finished.  And we didn’t get to meet him in person.  But it was so awesome just to be in the same room as James Roberts and hear him talk about his work.


We took pictures of some cosplayers (Sis took most of those—I took a couple myself), got to chat a bit with a couple of comic book artists, and we were even lucky get our copy of the Transformers: Dark Cybertron comic book volumes 1 and 2, before they ran out. This way we get more of TF: MTMTE and are introduced to TF: RID.  Maybe we might get into that and start reading TF:RID from the beginning sometime later.  Sis and I just finished Volume 5 of The Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye and…well, we want to continue reading it.  At the risk of meaning we’d lose our favorite characters further in the story.  The stories in this comic book can be so heartbreaking sometimes.  I have a few favorite characters I don’t want to see killed off, as well as plenty of characters that are not necessarily my favorite but are cool to appear every once in a while.

FAVORITES:

*Rung

*Drift

*Skids

*Fortress Maximus

*Tailgate

*And maybe Rodimus.

I’d regret if I didn’t go to this year’s BotCon.  We owed it to ourselves as newish Transformers fans to be introduced into the world that is—well, for us, just nice toys to look at, but also the beautiful artwork and storytelling that goes into the franchise as a whole.

Words that also mean robot or cyborg + derogatory words for robots

ROBOT

Machine

Humanoid robot

Humanoid

Android

Droid

Cybernetic person

Automatic computing system

Mechanical worker

Mechanical man

Metal Man

Artificial human

Artificial life

Drone


CYBORG

Cybernetic-organic system

Cybernetic organism

Robotic-organic system

Machine-organic interface/system

Computer brain

Cybernetic brain

Half human, half machine

I realize I might be referencing to the movie I, Robot often in this blog, but this film brings up a lot of issues to talk about in terms of what Daniel Dinello’s book Technophobia! introduces in its pages so far.  In the film I, Robot, Detective Spooner called Sonny a “canner,” and this reflects his prejudice against the robots. The Spooner character wouldn’t use that word if he didn’t feel hatred towards them.  And Sonny takes offense to the word “canner” and corrects Spooner by saying his name is Sonny.

In Asimov’s short story “Lost Little Robot,” the physicist Gerald Black had told a robot to “go lose [him]self,” and eventually spilled it out to Dr. Susan Calvin that he called it a number of derogatory names before telling it to go lose itself.  The order from this human being, in addition to the harmful names he had called him, resulted in the robot’s unusual behavior.

Technophobia…more reading July 6

I read more of Technophobia! and it’s still so fascinating. I think it is the most important book I ever chose for my research. It has just what I need: robots, androids and cyborgs and their history in science fiction. There were some explanations about machines and artificial humans in science fiction that were not limited to the following titles: The Golem, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Metropolis (1927), We (1924), H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, and E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909).

Important themes came up too, all and more of which I want to explore:

• Robots who want to be human, loved

• Master creates artificial slave------------slave dominates master

• Humans will be enslaved by technology

• Redefining what it means to be human

This is a quote from the book that I found to be a very important one:

“The gothic myth of artificial humans—the golem, the homunculus,

and the Frankenstein monster—will transform into robots, cyborgs,

androids, and clones of science fiction.” (Dinello, 46)

I read E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” in a Science Fiction class that I took at Cal State University Northridge. It was the only time in my college career at CSUN that I would be able to take the class. “The Machine Stops” was the first story we read. Of course not all the stories and novels we read were about machines or robots, but that class opened up my eyes to other topics that science fiction can explore and ask questions about, and introduce possible answers to them (therefore creating more questions). “The Machine Stops” was especially a good piece because it introduced the topic of all humans being completely dependent on machines to live, and all these machines were controlled by this one huge machine that everyone’s living quarters are a part of.

Personally I am a bit afraid of growing technology myself. The most hi-tech thing that I own is my purple iPod Nano. I don’t need an iPhone or an Android Phone, or whatever other multi-purpose phones people use for reasons other than for talking. I have a cell-phone for that. I found out from a an ad on TV that there is an iPhone App that can turn off the house lights, or close the garage door while you are away, in case you forgot to turn the switch earlier.  I mean, HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE???

Technophobia----reading the book so far…

I feel bad because for a whole week I didn’t read any of the library books. I only felt like reading them when I knew I would be able to sit down for at least two hours at a time.  I finally got around to continue reading Technophobia!: Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology by Daniel Dinello.

Right now I am done reading the first chapter "Technology is God."   I found it really fascinating and scary that technology and religion could eventually be combined to form some sort of principle for enhancing life: eventually everyone will replace their organic bodies with artificially created ones, and leave their biological selves behind. I read about the “Extropians”, who are people who believe in enhancing life through “technological expansion,” as Dinello explainds.  I guess being limited to living less than 100 years in the nature-given organic body is undesirable.

Why do people want to live forever?

This book is pretty heavy reading. I mean, it’s great, and eventually I might buy a copy for myself so I can re-read it if I need to. But it gets depressing because it makes me think about my own mortality. I am 25 and I still have so much to live for, but I know I’m not going to live forever. I’m even afraid of my life being cut short by a gun shot or a car crash. Will my parents still be alive in a time where hearts can rebuild themselves or an artificial brain can send signals to the body to stop the process of aging, or reverse it?

I am writing about these thoughts because I always believed that there is a life after death, an afterlife stage. But perhaps another form of afterlife is life after having a biological body. Afterlife could now mean becoming a robot, the human brain being put into a mechanical body. Is that “cyborganization”, or would this person still be a robot? Is humanity still there?

I will have to review my notes and read more of this book carefully, of course.