When we talked about the Uncanny Valley in class it definitely struck a chord with me. Anything human looking but not actually human always threw me off. From the Polar Express and wax figures to Avatar (with the blue people) I was never cool with how human they seemed. Until the lecture this week, I never knew why.
Things are human like, yet not human, leave us with a feeling of both familiarity and foreign. It throws us off. It made me wonder why we think this way though. I think, at least for me, it has something to do with the fact that I don’t like fakers. Our world is so full of people pretending to be what they aren’t and that is something that bothers me big time. Introducing the idea of robots that are pretending to be something that they’re not gets to me on a completely different level.
I think this is evident in the short film “Be Right Back”. They live in a world completely run by technology, much like ours. Martha was completely against the idea of this service when she first heard of it. It was strange to her and she knew that others would disapprove. She only gave in because of the circumstances that she was in. With a baby on the way and Ash’s sudden death, she was definitely stuck. The decision she made was one that I don’t know if I would have made or not. Unless I would be put in that situation I can’t say how I would react. I don’t think that it was the talking to him that made it unhealthy. Talking to him made it better, but the issue was that she became obsessed with it, allowing her dead husband to be the only contact she had.
But, I don’t think I’m really qualified enough to speak on the subject. My grandmother thinks it’s weird that I can email her a picture that I took on a camera. As we get older and older, technology is going to change rapidly. Some things will be created that will really freak us out, not because the technology is in itself “bad”; but because it is new. Things that are unheard of always leave us wary in the beginning. Just thinking of all the technological advances that have been made in this past decade makes you wonder just how far we’ll go.
3 comments:
Indeed our world is full of people faking who they really are faking their appearances in ways such as putting on make up, or faking their personality in a way to make that certain someone think more highly of them and in a way faking has become a necessity to many people in our society because it is something they have relied on for so long that they have become to believe it themselves. Although realistically what would the world be without fakers there is a place for everyone but if someone doesn't want to take their place as who they are it is now common practice to become something that someone is not to get what they want regardless of whether or not what they are doing is anything like the person they are or used to be.
I agree with your comment on how technology is not bad in itself, but that it is new. Oftentimes, people tend to be hesitant towards things they do not understand, and new technology can be one of those things. The fact that Martha could communicate with Ash via online chatroom and cellphone was startling for her at first. The Ash humanoid was very uneasy for her. There is some technology that we can live with, but there are others that may take longer for us to get used to.
I have never watched the Polar Express, but I can compare your opinion to a popular movie called Big Hero 6. With the same concept, Baymax in the movie is similar to Ash 2. However, the depiction of both characters are different. Baymax is more cartoon like and Ash 2 is more human like. Ash 2 leaves the viewers with foreign and familiar look, but it is also uncanny. Because it is uncanny, our brain does not want to be deceived by what is fake seems to be real. On the other hand, Baymax is not real, but it has Tadashi's kind heart. So, my conclusion is that we rather let a non human like robot to be our friend than a fake, artificial, and uncanny Ash to be our friend because our brains dislike the imminent morbidity or deception.
Post a Comment