R.U.R

R.U.R.

October 21, 2004
>Blog/response - RUR

The play R.U.R is sweet and short. Done in only three small acts, it somehow manages to possess an incredible amount of detail and strength in its ideas of the future, and human relations with technology advancement. Its amazingly captive story makes the audience forget about the real world. One theme that is portrayed throughout the play is perfectionism and the internal human desire to live in a utopia. The idea introducing robots into the world, created to help and live among humans is common in science fiction films such as, The Terminator series (starring our governor) and I, Robot (starring Will Smith –based on the writings of Isaac Asimov).

Rossum’s Universal Robots is a company that industrializes a robot created primarily to serve humans and replace jobs requiring manual labor. It began with an old Rossum, who, with the life originating substance in a test tube was able to create “life” without soul. After his death, young Rossum continues the job and takes the previously developed information and puts it to use. In order to apply these life forces to the world he must first consider the points needed to make robots that humans can benefit from while eliminating as many possible complications. However human error is something unavoidable and is the leading reason why a utopia with a civilization of natural humans is impossible.

Though the characters in R.U.R had the sole intention to fix global issues such as world hunger, money complications and end manual labor for humans, they still failed and brought the world to a state of near human extinction.

The Terminator series, a well known collection of movies about robots from the future (created by humans over time) that return to the modern times to annihilate the one who saves human race. In I, Robot we are given a glimpse of what our future may be if we continue to rely on technology everyday. It is the story of a detective who must save the human race from the robots. The robots were programmed to abide by certain rules that assure the safety and automatic authority of humans.

There is always a flaw (human error) when it comes to perfection. Nothing can ever be perfect, and these movies (like the play) the intention of robot production by humans backfires resulting in our own destruction or endangerment.