Info 215 - Dystopia Essay

Parth Patel

Professor Andrew Kane

INFO 215

Monday, August 6, 2018

I, Robot

        By definition, a dystopia is an imagined place where things are unpleasant, fearful, and dehumanized. In today’s day and age, technology is always changing and will continue to change. Advancements in the field of technology are reaching new heights and people are getting acquainted to these changes. With these rapidly growing and fast-paced advancements, many people tend to speculate upon the future, where technology will one day be more valued than natural human interaction.

        This is the exact case with I, Robot, a fantasy film, based off a novel by Issac Asimov, produced to portray the hazards and detrimental dangers of a future filled with robots. The general synopsis of the film consists of Detective Del Spooner, who is very suspicious of these futuristic robots, that tries to find clues to uncover a murder case. Throughout the journey, Detective Spooner encounters many instances where the robots, which were known as the NS-5, turned against him and started causing mass amounts of havoc.

        These robots were designed by Dr. Alfred Lanning, the main person of interest as to who was murdered. Detective Spooner took it under his control to study Dr. Lanning’s life just before death and try to uncover a few essential secrets that were left behind. Ultimately, this film was a prime example of how one city, namely Chicago in 2035, can turn into a detrimental dystopia. There are three key characteristics from this film that define it to be a dystopia: the natural world is banished and distrusted, citizens conform to uniform expectations; individuality and dissent are bad, and the society is an illusion of a perfect utopian world.

        I, Robot began with a scene where Detective Spooner was awaking in the morning, living a normal, natural life, following his morning routine. However, once he was ready to leave his small apartment building, there was robot at his front step delivering a package for him. This was just the start of what seemed to be a world filled with robots. Scenes after that showed many other robots taking on humanly tasks, such as collecting garbage, assisting traffic, and helping others on the streets. These scenes portray a dehumanized type of environment, where humans distrust the natural world and, ultimately, cut ties with all of its original principles. Particularly, this type of behavior or practice leads to extreme laziness and only being reliant on technological measures. These scenes helped shape the rest of the film as the storyline evolved.

        The later scenes dealt extremely with the characteristic that the citizens conformed with uniform expectations, which was to own and regular use one of the NS-4’s or NS-5’s provided by the USR (United States Robotics). As for any industry, the overall goal is to make their product accessible and available to everyone. At that particular point, mostly everyone had an NS-4 and the USR was offering a trade-in for the NS-5 upon its deployment. In a matter of no time, everyone was interested in either trading-in or purchasing an NS-5 for their own personal use. Individuals were also expected to know how to operate and command their robot, ultimately making individuals completely reliant on their robots. In any case, all viewers would have different creative thoughts about the future, considering that technology is rapidly advancing.