RoboCop 2014

There was obvious political commentary in RoboCop. Over the top in many cases. I liked it. The movie started by dealing with one of my favorite subjects: drones. While the opening sequence was clearly an exaggeration of the attitudes it is also clear to anyone who is thinking long term that such drones will be the future of the US (and other) militaries as well as domestic policing.

One of the things that Sam Jackson's character does very well is to articulate the arguments that will be used to push for more drones. Is the senate pro crime? Is the senate for the death of American soldiers? Is the senate against saving the lives of citizens?

Mark my words when I say that these will be the very same arguments used as more and more automated technology is deployed by the state and citizens will be emotionally primed to accept these challenges. Risk is bad. Who wishes harm to the American soldiers? Who wants to be seen as pro crime? Already we have seen a proliferation of legislation with emotionally charged names and attached to emotionaly charged events. If you oppose a piece of gun legislation you are pro child killing. You are pro mall shooting.

Sam Jackson's character looks dead into the camera when he makes his charges, much like our cable news talking heads do. I was left wondering how many people in the audience really thought about the reality of his questions.

Understand that the defense department is, at this very moment, funding research into automated vehicles able to navigate various terrains without human input. Japan's Honda is going full on with their AIBO robot. Understand that this WILL be happening.

The next issue was the medical issue. Murphy has been reduced to lungs, heart, throat and head after his “event”. It's pretty clear he had no living will cause his wife is left to make a decision about his life that we find out he clearly did not want for himself.

Side note, how much blood did they have to remove given the smaller amount of “body” (if you want to call it that) he has? The brain uses 70% of the glucose in the body and 25% of the oxygen. Does he require less breathing to maintain optimal oxygen levels?

Anyway, the interesting proposition presented in the movie is that being human is all (or exclusively) about what happens in the brain. The body doesn't matter. But of more interest to me is that HE had no choice. His wife made a choice for him and then he was made into a robot for the sole purpose of serving the state and the profits of a corporation. Clearly with the type of body he was given (I guess flesh like material wasn't something that was being researched), there was never an intention to give him his life back, unless you think that his life consisted only of solving and preventing crime.

Maybe it's just me but the question I asked myself was how, when this guy gets “aroused” (in the mind) how exactly does he release that? I was pretty clear that he “enjoyed” his wife. The movie was also quite clear that his sex life was done for (not even taking into consideration that he must be hooked up to the blood-nutrient machine. I suppose we are to take the lesson that so long as he's alive he should be grateful.

I dunno.

I would think that a company with such technological advances would have been long able to produce human looking appendages. Even now we have the technology to repair the skin of burn victims without leaving the tell tale “burn” patterns and look that accompanies skin grafts. In the last “suit up” scene, I fully expected to see a more 'human” body to pop out of the ground. Maybe it's because I reject that being human, alive, is simply about the brain and it's processing of signals.

I suppose I would eat the red pill too.

It could come down to this: Would you prefer to be dead or “alive”, able to do many great things and unable to feel anything except whatever it feels like to have a malfunctioning suit? Take the questions seriously. The technology that will give us more artificial limbs whether they be as replacements for damaged/amputated ones, or as voluntarily added will be here sooner than later.