Robot 101

What sort of robot are you?

There being as many iterations of robots, cast across as many frequencies of the imagination as there are human personalities and psycho-sexual patterns, we find the robot is not a question of existence in the future, but a question of your mind today.

What sort of robot are you?

Are you the social robot?



The social robot finds its robotics giving it a form and function different than the rest of its society. This can be a positive differentiation, or a negative one. Your robotics might have nothing to do with circuits and servos, but instead be all about culture, and about attitude, and desire. Cybernetics has been misappropriated by cyber culture, and has forgotten its programmatic roots. In the end, it is all about your territory. Are you comfortable with what you are? Are you similar, and yet you desire a different purpose? Are you reaching some sort of program fault? How will your programming allow you to adapt?

In Daft Punk's Electroma, everyone is robotic, except for robots, who wish to be human. Is it about the self-destruct sequence? Or is it really about the self-desire sequence? Silly human! In cybernetics, nothing is "about" anything! There is no meaning here. There is only the sequence, its continuation, and its eventual death. If you're asking about what it "means", then you are clearly non-robotic.



Or perhaps you have reached a more frantic zone, and you are feeling your territory dissolve beneath your feet? Are you the neurotic robot?

Are you the neurotic robot?

The neurotic robot is a simple machine. It is the contact between two planes, the axle through the wheel, the teeth of gears intermeshed, each biting each other in sadistic self-existence. But when you dislodge the tab from the slot, the function breaks down.



There is never only one neurotic program, and so the others will take over. Without the guiding physicality of the emotional program, the other programs will function in their stead. The on/off of logic may be applied to color preference. The left/right plane differentiation may be applied to in and out of the body. In a state of deterritorialization, the robot functions jerkily, unable to orient itself. But it still functions. This is a robot, after all!

In THX 1138 the humans are robots, and the robots are machines. Programming is reserved for those constructed from the weaknesses of flesh, who need their emotions tightly and cybernetically designed to function without break down in such a harsh territory. Neurotic robots are sometimes readjusted, other times they do not.



This has been an introduction into two types of robots. There are many more!

Film/Re-Film it

As I was alerted by @wicked_halo, I thought I should pass on the rumor that Daft Punk is going to be scoring Tron 2.

Why, you ask, are they making a Tron 2? Well, because:



If you need a less blurry reason than that, then it is because Hollywood is out of ideas, but they know the people who go to Comic Con will still pay to see any movie based on anything they already know of.

Can't say it is a bad idea to have Daft Punk score the movie. I just really hope they update the sense of technology in the movie. I re-watched Tron not too long ago, and the computer metaphor is really, hopeless dated. But if they are still going to chase each other on motorcycles across a circuit board, that doesn't seem to be too possible.

Then again, the aesthetic of the movie always was it's major appeal. Even when I watched it as a kid, having only the most basic concept of computers (I think we had an Apple II then) it seemed pretty specious. But, who doesn't like neon and motorcycles.

So I guess it works. Hell, most Daft Punk videos look a lot like Tron, anyway.



Here's another good one. I add this because I've don't think I've ever mentioned that this is my un-official "getting shit done on the iphone" song.



I would love to make a video showing a finger doing all of these things on the iphone, in quick, cut-up style. Well, all except "paste it", of course...