(DEAD ROBOTS

Thompson, Clive (2004) “The Undead Zone” Slate.msn.com, June 9, 2004.

Robots and androids can look cute and attractive to real living human beings. This also applies to characters in video games, print media, and related. We love to watch them and share in their story.

There appears to be a paradox or a conundrum however. If a robot or related graphic character begins to appear too real, there appears to be a survival mechanism within us.

Our attraction turns to dread. In other words, the robot no longer appears to be a robot, but a dead human. Dead robots become the name for robots that appear so real that they appear not to be more life like, but dead.

There is a tipping point or a critical threshold where living and dead meet. Our non-cognitive, non-rational, but our surviving self does its automatic “click-whir.” We instantly see the living go to the dead. The dead is the life like robot turned dead because it is so real.

One of the first to discover this was Mashahiro Mori, a roboticist. He found that the realness of a robot was attractive to human beings only up to a point. Then the dread stepped in. Our survival mechanism needed to differentiate the living and dead turns on and we turn out and off our fond feelings for the mechanical creature.

Creators of video games have found the same mechanism kicks in for video characters.

A tipping point occurs and the reader is no longer is attracted to the story. This also apples to cartoons. We enjoy looking at the creatures only up to the point that we can differentiate that they are not us.

Let’s do an experiment. On the website, REALDOLL.COM/ are both human females and males that look like humans. It is an adult site, but in reality, it is picture of nude or semi-nude robots. In other words, if you have seen a nude mannequin in a picture window of a big box retail store, you have seen these. Or have you? Look at the faces and then the other features. You may get a quick spark of arousal or disgust, but these are robots. The adult site is a legality to protect the producer. Do they look real? More importantly, do they look TOO REAL?  If that is the case, the company may have a hard time with sales.

Surely a robot can not look too real. Right? Wrong. When the robot is not in use the TOO REAL robot becomes a dead body. Attraction turns too dread. Why I feel safe in sending you to the site is that we are looking at non-humans. I still want to apologize because there is some unpleasant or erotic portions to the site. I want to go on record that this is the best site that I could find for human appearing robots. It is not one of my favorites.

Incidentally, to compound the problem is that if we dread TOO REAL robots, we want the surrounding scenery and or attachments to be as realistic as possible. The dread only comes with robots, video creatures, and cartoon characters.

Those in graphics and roboticists have a term for the too realistic characters. They are called creatures from the Dead Zone. Or, they inhabit the Uncanny Valley.

Thus, reality presents us with another puzzle. We want ultimate fabrication of most of reality except that which represents us. When it comes to human like creatures, we want the last 1% to be fantasy not the real thing.