Plot device

[voluptuary_manque]

There is something called 'the uncanny valley' phenomenon that posits that humans are potentially 'creeped out' by animation that is too close to real but not real, itself. If a pleasure robot is imperfectly human but really close, would we actually be attracted to it or repelled? Interesting possibility, especially if told from the robot's POV.

 

[sr71plt]

There's a series of TV commercials running on an personal stock trader company that does this with characters--and I find it both repelling and intriguing. One of those too clever for itself commercials, I think, as I never bother learning the product name--I'm too focused on how they have barely animated the characters in the commercials.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I remember "The Polar Express" a kids movie that was state of the art, at that time, computer-animated human figures. it was pretty creepy to me-- much more so than any more simplified animation would have been.

telling it from the robot's POV? whoah, dude i think you've got something there!

 

[voluptuary_manque]

The Polar Express was one of the examples given in the discussion of the phenomenon. I didn't find it off-putting and was out of the country when Beowulf came out. Anyone know if it's possible to watch 3D on a flat screen TV? Maybe I ought to rent it. If for no other reason than to see Jolie animated naked!

 

[sr71plt]

"Telling it from the robot's perspective?" Didn't the do that in Star Wars already?

And wasn't that last year's favorite animated film, as well. I forget the title, but my granddaughters subjected me to it in the theater twice.

 

[Stella_Omega]

"Telling it from the robot's perspective?" Didn't the do that in Star Wars already?

And wasn't that last year's favorite animated film, as well. I forget the title, but my granddaughters subjected me to it in the theater twice.

They didn't do it with sex though. Rule 34 can not be denied.

 

[Boxlicker101]

I saw Polar Express and was not creeped out at all, although it was rather hard to follow the story line.

I have started a story of a man who has a Love Doll, and I have been doing some research on high quality and expensive artificial women. These are nothing at all like the phonies I have seen in porno shops, but closely resemble real women, at least in appearance. I can see the differences, of course, mostly in the eyes and mouths, but I am not at all creeped out.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I saw Polar Express and was not creeped out at all, although it was rather hard to follow the story line.

I have started a story of a man who has a Love Doll, and I have been doing some research on high quality and expensive artificial women. These are nothing at all like the phonies I have seen in porno shops, but closely resemble real women, at least in appearance. I can see the differences, of course, mostly in the eyes and mouths, but I am not at all creeped out.

You are extra special, Box.

 

[TxRad]

Robin Williams did Centennial Man. The story is from a robots POV and about acceptance of human appearing robots.

If gays have such a hard time being accepted by society in general, what chance would a robot have? Any story would have to be set in a far future and the way things are going there might not be such a time.

 

[Verdad]

The uncanny valley hypothesis has roots in Freud's concept of the uncanny, or the Unheimliche. The essay is not online, but you can get the idea in the wiki article here.

With or without the Freudian lingo, the hypothesis strikes me as sound. An uncanny pleasure robot would be creepy as hell.

 

[bronzeage]

This idea was the basic plot of Bladerunner. There were genetically engineered beings who were biological constructions, including a few designed to be prostitutes.

In the end, the ultimate product did not even know she was not a true human being.

 

[3113]

I remember "The Polar Express" a kids movie that was state of the art, at that time, computer-animated human figures. it was pretty creepy to me-- much more so than any more simplified animation would have been.

The Polar Express was one of the examples given in the discussion of the phenomenon. I didn't find it off-putting and was out of the country when Beowulf came out.

I was able to watch Polar, but found it weird, and found Beowulf impossible to watch and weird. The animation that is and yet is not live action is disturbing--you want it to be one or the other when it comes to people. But I think there's more to it than that in these movies. They're very dark, even Polar, a presumably Christmas kids movie is spare, dark, and more like a horror film. It certainly doesn't help these films that the director makes us focus on these almost-people because there's nothing else to look at in those films.

It's interesting that Pixar gets it right. You can have a movie of "things" animated to be exactly right--furniture, cars, toys. But the people themselves must not be too close, because you get that disturbing disconnect. Even in the latest movie, Up, I noticed that the clothes being worn were uncannily realistic, but the actual people were cartoonish. Cartoonish makes them endearing--something we can smile at. Real, but not real, unsettles us.

That said, I'm a Christmas Carol fan and I'll be going to see that movie which is the latest from this almost-people director (he's really enamored of this and unless he gets run over by a truck, he'll keep putting them out). We'll see how that turns out.

 

[3113]

In the end, the ultimate product did not even know she was not a true human being.

But this is a very different theme from what VM is discussing. Bladerunner is all about the question of what is human and how can you tell what's real (a running theme in all of P.K. Dick's works as he was a paranoid schizophrenic and drug user).

What VM is discussing is when you can tell that you're with a machine, yet it comes very close to being real. As in movies like the Polar Express, where they don't use live action, but the cartoon isn't cartoon-like, it's a mimic of live action. This would be, if you will, the robots that were made along the way to getting to the Bladerunner world. Robots twenty years earlier which the company hadn't managed to get real enough to actually fool people. Close but no cigar.

This is what creeps people out--creates that effect. And it makes sense. You expect something like a movie to be one thing or the other. Live action or cartoon (including Pixar cartoon). But when it's not either, when it's a cartoon pretending to be live action, that we find disturbing. And that, I think, is what VM is suggesting. A robot that is trying to fool you, but both you and the robot know it isn't the real thing. It's not a stiff doll--it moves and tries to act human--but it's not so good that, as in Bladerunner, it can fool you unless you give it an elaborate test that takes hours and special machines. The robot is clearly not human, yet its eerily close.

That turns it from being a science fiction thriller into a sci-fi horror story, IMHO.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I am giving some thought to this. 3 is headed in the direction I started from but now I am thinking of other possible plot lines. Suppose the pleasurebot were actually a law enforcement device. When a serial rapist is captured and convicted, instead of imprisoning the perp at great expense, the authorities sentence him to sex with a bot that eventually gives him such a horror of sex that he never touches another person.

Alternately, a pleasure bot could be used to help someone with an inability to relate to humans because their uncanny valley is shifted oddly in such a way that the patient is repelled by real people but develops an affection and a relationship with the bot.

It may be that the possibilities are legion!

 

[lance gt]

With technology advancing as rapidly in robotics, as well as the fields of prosthetics and artificial skin, the liklihood of creating a movable humanoid for sexual pleasure is right around the corner.

The sex machines that exist now, between Sybians and FuckingMachines can be all adapted into an elaborate human -shaped configuration that mimic muscle contractions and thrusts, so that the user can use any position they desire. Artificial lubricants to simulate real ones and fluids to ejaculate with,(different flavours of course). Additional vibration can be included, it is a toy after all, workable tongues and fingers, the list is endless to what can be made with what's available right now.

Made to order male and female sex robots are going to be hot sellers at Costco and Wal-Mart in 10 years. Sex toys are becoming so mainstream now that the acceptance of selling something as a robotic playmate, will catch on worldwide. Real Dolls have been around for more than a decade and are improving them all the time.

We may not be able to clone people to have as sex toys, but we can have as many robotic lovers as we want. No law against it yet.

 

[ExoMani]

There is something called 'the uncanny valley' phenomenon that posits that humans are potentially 'creeped out' by animation that is too close to real but not real, itself. If a pleasure robot is imperfectly human but really close, would we actually be attracted to it or repelled? Interesting possibility, especially if told from the robot's POV.

I’m a big sci-fi fan, but I can’t get into the robot-as-human thing at all. If a machine could think, its needs and motivations would be extremely different from that of a human being. But, I suspect mine is a minority opinion, based on the popularity of the ‘Data’ character in the ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ TV series.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

With technology advancing as rapidly in robotics, as well as the fields of prosthetics and artificial skin, the liklihood of creating a movable humanoid for sexual pleasure is right around the corner.

The sex machines that exist now, between Sybians and FuckingMachines can be all adapted into an elaborate human -shaped configuration that mimic muscle contractions and thrusts, so that the user can use any position they desire. Artificial lubricants to simulate real ones and fluids to ejaculate with,(different flavours of course). Additional vibration can be included, it is a toy after all, workable tongues and fingers, the list is endless to what can be made with what's available right now.

Made to order male and female sex robots are going to be hot sellers at Costco and Wal-Mart in 10 years. Sex toys are becoming so mainstream now that the acceptance of selling something as a robotic playmate, will catch on worldwide. Real Dolls have been around for more than a decade and are improving them all the time.

We may not be able to clone people to have as sex toys, but we can have as many robotic lovers as we want. No law against it yet.

Ten years? Unlikely. I agree with your analysis of the demand but suspect that your timeline is a couple of decades off. But we'll see, won't we?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I’m a big sci-fi fan, but I can’t get into the robot-as-human thing at all. If a machine could think, its needs and motivations would be extremely different from that of a human being. But, I suspect mine is a minority opinion, based on the popularity of the ‘Data’ character in the ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ TV series.

I think that that would be a major factor in the plot. A pleasurebot might be fully aware of the 'uncanny valley' effect and either use it or attempt to deal with it while naturally not feeling it at all.

 

[Verdad]

Alternately, a pleasure bot could be used to help someone with an inability to relate to humans because their uncanny valley is shifted oddly in such a way that the patient is repelled by real people but develops an affection and a relationship with the bot.

Can't resist this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgras_syndrome

It's an odd delusion in which a patient thinks someone from their surrounding was replaced by a doppelganger. What you just said made me think your character could have some strange neurological condition, too.

 

[Verdad]

I’m a big sci-fi fan, but I can’t get into the robot-as-human thing at all. If a machine could think, its needs and motivations would be extremely different from that of a human being. But, I suspect mine is a minority opinion, based on the popularity of the ‘Data’ character in the ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ TV series.

Well, it's questionable whether strong AI is even possible. Not to mention say, FTL travel, or time travel. That's of little importance to writers of sci-fi, though. These are accepted devices for telling stories, and as such, they serve their purpose perfectly.

Certainly the devices of myths and fairy tales, such as dragons or Baba Yaga's flying around in mortars aren't a very likely possibility. Yet they too serve their purpose, and the difference between fantasy and sci-fi genres isn't really as huge as it's sometimes made to be. It's more in the chosen aesthetic, the set of tropes belonging to one genre or the other, than in sci-fi's alleged obligation to prophesize or adhere strictly to extrapolation from the possible.

As Kurt Vonnegut was wont to say, fantastic casts light on the quotidian—so long as it does that, creating a world the reader can buy for its internal consistency, I'd say we're perfectly pleased to suspend our disbelief about things such as a robot's motivation.

 

[Stella_Omega]

For your enjoyment;

http://vimeo.com/1676450

Unit three thousand twenty one is warming
Makes a humming sound - when its circuits
Duplicate emotions -
And a sense of coldness detaches
As it tries to comfort your sadness -

One more robot learns to be something more than
A machine - when it tries the way it does - make it seem
Like it can love -
Cause it's hard to say what's real - when you know the
Why you feel - is it wrong to think it's love
When it tries the way it does...

Feeling a synthetic kind of love
Dreaming a sympathetic wish -
As the lights blink faster and brighter -

One more robot learns to be something more than
A machine - when it tries the way it does - make it seem
Like it can love -
Cause it's hard to say what's real - when you know the
Why you feel - is it wrong to think it's love
When it tries the way it does...

 

[jomar]

You should write Lars' Real Girl Comes to Life. Kind of like Pinocchio, but different.

 

[ExoMani]

There is something called 'the uncanny valley' phenomenon that posits that humans are potentially 'creeped out' by animation that is too close to real but not real, itself. If a pleasure robot is imperfectly human but really close, would we actually be attracted to it or repelled? Interesting possibility, especially if told from the robot's POV.

I’m a big sci-fi fan, but I can’t get into the robot-as-human thing at all. If a machine could think, its needs and motivations would be extremely different from that of a human being. But, I suspect mine is a minority opinion, based on the popularity of the ‘Data’ character in the ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ TV series.

I think that that would be a major factor in the plot. A pleasurebot might be fully aware of the 'uncanny valley' effect and either use it or attempt to deal with it while naturally not feeling it at all.

O.K. That could make for an interesting story.

 

[ExoMani]

I’m a big sci-fi fan, but I can’t get into the robot-as-human thing at all. If a machine could think, its needs and motivations would be extremely different from that of a human being. But, I suspect mine is a minority opinion, based on the popularity of the ‘Data’ character in the ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ TV series.

Well, it's questionable whether strong AI is even possible. Not to mention say, FTL travel, or time travel. That's of little importance to writers of sci-fi, though. These are accepted devices for telling stories, and as such, they serve their purpose perfectly.

Certainly the devices of myths and fairy tales, such as dragons or Baba Yaga's flying around in mortars aren't a very likely possibility. Yet they too serve their purpose, and the difference between fantasy and sci-fi genres isn't really as huge as it's sometimes made to be. It's more in the chosen aesthetic, the set of tropes belonging to one genre or the other, than in sci-fi's alleged obligation to prophesize or adhere strictly to extrapolation from the possible.

As Kurt Vonnegut was wont to say, fantastic casts light on the quotidian—so long as it does that, creating a world the reader can buy for its internal consistency, I'd say we're perfectly pleased to suspend our disbelief about things such as a robot's motivation.

Your last sentence does sum it up.

I'm willing to suspend my disbelief, for a while, for the sake of an amusing yarn, but I don’t take that kind of story too seriously. Many people, however, take them very seriously. Sci-fi bulletin boards are notorious for flame wars about what's ‘scientifically’ believable and what is not.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Okay, I checked out a few scenes from Beowulf. I'm not creeped out. Basically, they're disappointingly false. Now, if Grendel's mama were to show up on my doorstep . . . that would be creepy!