What we talk about when we talk about robots
Science fiction has always fascinated me.
The classic literature and authors, writing so early into the technological era, felt premonitory. Reading I, Robot, Foundation, Brave New World left an impression on my impressionable teen brain. It is not surprising the One Story I had in my head was a story of science fiction.
That Story That Hasn't Been was born slightly different; an extinct humanity, leaving the torch of society for their creation to carry; their Created left to look to themselves when they were, at last, alone.
I wouldn't dare myself to talk at length on robots and literature, on what it meant to give it a conscience and a creator and a directive purpose. It would be an exercise in pretending to be knowledged for me, and an exercise of fake believing it to you.
But I can talk about what I think when I think of robots.
Questions of identity, of purpose beyond determinism, of acceptance - or rejection - of the burden of legacy wrapped in the gift of life.
I suppose these stayed largely the same in the transition from the original ideas into the world of cramOS, if a little more jaded. In Crimson Rock, the robots were left behind. No resources available to keep them going, no information on how to use the technology left behind, no sustainability, no way out.
On the original idea, the passing of the last human would be the defacto end of the human era. An Earth now inhabited by the dominant species Android, left to understand what they even wanted to do with it and with themselves.
Now, in cramOS, the world is not our own, and the humans are gone. The separation between the robots that honor the humans and those that resent them has potential to grow larger than robots that simply watched their parents slowly perish. All the same, those robots of earth inherited culture; in comparison, we don't know how much of Crimson Rock culture resemblances what the humans started.
The same questions do persist; what can they do with the life they get? Or even; are they fated to the life chosen for them? A life of scarcity of resources, destined to tribal canibalism and looking up to the sky in hope or rage?
This, I think, is a fun question to answer through cramOS.
Going further, even: if society may or may not be stuck, can we say the same of the individual?
How deterministic it is, for a robot to have a big arm, and that big arm to define them?
The original story had robots be even more shadowed by their creators; human like features, human like emotions. Individuality expressed through rejection or embrace of this shadow: robots removing their fake skin and living with a real appearance, or choosing to work and keeping a family and living as a human, to cling to that determined purpose.
Now, individuality goes beyond personality, and finds itself determined by body modifications, even some that impact this so called personality. Can a robot with a Self Preservation Module fight their own nature? Is a robot a sum of its parts, their body, their mind?
This is also a fun question for a game of cramOS to explore.
They are fun, after all, because they don't fall far from the tree.
Are these questions any different considering a biological disposition compared to a mechanical disposition? Are the questions of purpose or legacy any different if born from a womb rather than built from parts?
When we talk about robots, we talk about humans.
When we talk about robots abandoned by their creators, burdened by life in a planet of scarcity and nonsustainability, stuck between continuity or revolt, without any tools to change their own fate, left to fend for themselves and fight among themselves, we talk about a very particular group of humans, and how either these humans or these robots can play the hand they were dealt.
Welcome to Crimson Rock, your forever home.