They Might Be Vacuum Cleaners

Today’s New York Times features a robotic clash – a review of the Will Smith film I, Robot, which opens on Friday, and a review of the iRobot Roomba Discovery, a new $250 robotic vacuum cleaner.

To take the two stories in reverse order, the Discovery isn’t iRobot’s first product. It has already sold something like 500,000 of the original Roomba model vacuum cleaners, according to Times writer William Grimes. But, according to Grimes, the Roomba’s software is based on the software for robotic minesweepers that iRobot (slogan: "Robots for the real world") manufactures for the military. So, the Roomba is one of those marvelous civilian applications of military technology. You know, like the Internet. (Disclaimer: I used to be employed on a salary line half-funded by the Defense Advanced Research Products Agency [DARPA], which also funded most of the hardware and software that went into making what became the original Internet backbone.) Grimes concludes of the Roomba,

In its robotic dreams, it's a cleaning superhero, sent to Earth to seek out dirt and, in military language, terminate it with extreme prejudice. In real life, it's a little more like the superhero's sidekick: eager, ready for action, but prone to get into trouble. You can't help but like it. It tries so hard. But time and again it makes you realize that the real time-saving device, when it comes to cleaning, is a broom and dustpan.

The Roomba may not be anyone's savior, but it's apparently entertaining enough to attract people with time & money to burn. It's not much of a threat to anyone, not to the union janitor earning $15 an hour, not even to the undocumented cleaning woman earning $4 an hour, and certainly not to a hero with the muscles and good looks of Will Smith. However, according to New York Times film critic Edward Rothstein, "For Asimov, Robots Were Friends. Not So for Will Smith." The robots in I, Robot, which is not primarily based on Asimov's robot stories, are apparently not as benign as Roomba. The clip I saw on Letterman last night showed a truckload of robots attacking Smith's car. (The visuals were surprisingly Tron-esque -- I wonder what's up with that.) Asimov did worry that robots were a danger to humanity, but not in the Frankenstein monster run amok mode. Asimov's biggest worry was that humans would become dependent on robots. With smart, flexible, hard-working robots to do all the work, people would become decadent, thoughtless, lifeless, useless fops like old European royalty. (Of course, Asimov doesn't mention the fact that the rich folks who own the robots let the rest of us, who no longer have jobs or land or rights to any of the fruits of the natural world, starve to death. We would rise up, but the rich have robot armies, like in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. I've got to quit now, but remind me to say something later about Vonnegut's optimistic/pessimistic Player Piano.)

By the way, the Wikipedia entry on the band They Might Be Giants reports that

The band takes its name from a 1971 movie starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward (based on the play of the same name written by James Goldman.) In the film, George C. Scott plays Justin Playfair, a man who believes he is Sherlock Holmes; his psychiatrist (last name "Watson") goes along with him in search of Moriarty. Playfair defends Don Quixote's tilting at windmills, saying that the windmills of course were not giants, but thinking they might be shows imagination:

All the best minds used to think the world was flat. But what if it isn't? It might be round. And bread mold might be medicine. If we never looked at things and thought of what might be, why we'd all still be out there in the tall grass with the apes.

They might be giants, but then again they might be robotic vacuum cleaners that don't work right unless you pre-clean the room. I guess I'd better find my glasses.