- robbie: this is the first classic "robot story" from i, robot, although it appears to have been revised to be positioned that way. the initial story did not feature references to susan calvin, had different dates, had no references to robot laws, etc. i had to check, because i wondered if asimov might have intended it as a back story to calvin before retreating, but that doesn't add up. in the initial story, it seems that asimov is intentionally trying to soften the image of robots in the face of the various opposition to the use of robots in day-to-day life, via the fable of a little girl that is attached to the robot as a friend, and her parents trying to grapple with it; the mother opposes the robot, while the father seems to be agnostic about it, but would rather defer to his daughter's feelings, despite caving in to the mother, in the end. asimov doesn't really come to any firm conclusions here, and he really does as good a job of representing his opponents as he does anywhere else. but, if the claim is that the resolution is the acceptance of the robot into the family, i'm not sure that that's true - i might foresee that mom's opposition to the robot would not end quite there. i'm more interested in the question of whether the robot is entitled to personhood rights, a question we're currently grappling with in regards to some more intelligent non-human species. is asimov assigning that position to the naivete of a little girl with intent? i think that resolving this issue is really quite simple: it depends on if we choose to design a robot to be a person or if we decide to refrain from doing so. see, and this is where asimov leaves questions open, here, in that it's ambiguous as to how this robot is created; he seems to write off the idea that the robot is a person, something i would agree with in general in real-life, but then describes the behaviour of the robot in unrealistically anthropomorphic terms. i might agree that robots are not persons, in terms of how we can design them today, and in terms of how we should choose to design them in the future, but i think that robbie seems very much like a person, and that any theoretical robot that behaves much like robbie ought to be seen as a person, under the law. so, it's really a good thing that i don't think that robbie is a very realistic representation of what robots are or ever might be, as that would undermine how i approach robots and roboticization. asimov's intent may have consequently somewhat backfired; if he was purposefully attempting to soften the image of robots by making them more personable and likeable, and i thought i could actually take that idea seriously, it would make me more opposed to them, and not less so.