All Watched over by Machines of Silent Grace?

摘要

When discussing the place of robotic system in civilian and military society, typically two opposing key themes will emerge: dreams of robot heaven and nightmares of robot hell. And it was in the 1960s, in this dual context—the robot as facilitator, the robot as destroyer—that the poet Richard Brautigan highlighted a vision of humans and robots working together to build a new society, a Utopian cybernetic world 'all watched over by machines of loving grace' (Brautigan 1967). In the intervening four decades since Brautigan's poem was first published, a number of core technologies required to underpin such cybernetic Utopias have been successfully developed, even if the concomitant social changes he promised have yet to materialise. In the civilian world, current examples of the forecast army of 12 million plus1 robot workers include: the ubiquitous yellow 'Fanuc' industrial robots; the 'i-Robot' vacuum cleaner, the 'Robomow' lawnmower; the 'Cogniron' home companion; 'Forex' bot financial traders, etc.~2