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Are We Not Men?

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Today’s post comes from NASA’s Curiosity Rover.

curiosity020313

My ground controllers (lovely term, that) have informed me that China’s Jade Rabbit Moon Rover has encountered a problem after just three months’ service and will likely stop working sometime during the next few weeks. This new information came in a heart-rending message written in the robot’s voice, literally saying farewell to humanity because the device realizes that it cannot power down to hibernate through the coming lunar night, and it is about to die.

I’m as sentimental as the next piece of space equipment, but do we really have to invent personalities for our extraterrestrial tools and pretend that they speak to us in human voices?

I say “no way, dude.” People and machines are different, and keeping those lines that separate us clearly drawn is an important habit that we need to establish early on in our relationship. Otherwise, we may quickly come to a point where determining who is a person and who is not becomes nothing more than a matter of opinion. And we saw how well nine smart people on the U.S. Supreme Court handled that distinction.

So when the fading Jade Rabbit says:

“The sun has fallen, and the temperature is dropping so quickly… to tell you all a secret, I don’t feel that sad. I was just in my own adventure story – and like every hero, I encountered a small problem.”

I say “Puh-leez! Get over yourself, Jade Rabbit. You’re just a bucket of bolts who is about to become another expensive wreck on the lunar surface. Spare us the tears!”

I would also add that while all of us outer space probes are purely technical contraptions, some of us are more self-involved and melodramatic than others. And while I am not programmed to have an opinion about such things, it does seem to me that it’s a waste of programming capacity to try to put the personality of Scarlett O’Hara into a glorified lawnmower.

The Curiosity Rover has a good point here – we should start nitpicking now if we’re ever going to have a chance of enforcing the distinction between humans and machines. Or is it already too late?

Which of your favorite devices has the most personality?

33 thoughts on “Are We Not Men?”

  1. Good morning. Right after our first dish washer was installed we noticed that the controls, a vent, and the handle were placed so that it’s front looked like it had a face. We gave the machine a name, I think it was Gertie, and we gave it a voice. After several years of loading and unloading the washer we no longer think of it as a friend of some kind and it is now treated as a machine without a personality.

    I suppose the old Honda CRV that I have been driving for many years has the most personality of any of the machines I own. It doesn’t have a name. It is sort of a close friend.

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  2. my snowblower has the quirks and oddities that qualifies it as a device with personality. i try to get it up and prepared in the fall before the weather hits.it is old and doenst work ss well as it did years ago when as a good son i bought it for my dad to make his life better. i dont know if he ever used it. if the electric starter didnt work first try he would call a local to come and blow out his driveway. he was just fine without challanging his handy man brain. my exerience with this left over relic of the past is that i have rigged the handle that makes the auger on the front spin and push the snow so that it works pretty much the way it is supposed to. last year the handel tension was set too tight and m hands were exhausted by the time i was done with the driveway. this year the starter started acting up and it took a modified manipulation of the extension cord to get iti going. that stopped working and the pull cord was the answer. that broke and i had to order a new electric starter. the electric starter was installed at the factory and they used some interesting shortcuts and modifacations and it was fun learning and tweaking the new part to deal with the past tramatic events the mchine had endured. i feel like i am the patron of the rescue blower community. it is a pain in the butt but after spending a winter shoveilng my driveway a couple years ago i am a big fan of loud noise and frozed mechanisms sharing the arctic moments out on the polar ice cap. its getting old and tired and while it only has three working parts i have to deal with.the lever thant maeks the auger spin, the lever that makes the wheels go round and the crank that makes the augure go one way or the other. it has numerous ways to screw up the way those levers work, i keep discovering new ones and figuring out ways to get around it. my old vw bus was repairable with a pleirs and a roll of baling wire, not to many of my cars since have qualified but this snow blower does. if it ever does have to go into the shop ill bet the mechanics are going to wonder who the heck thought up all the odd ways around the converntional fix. me and the blower worked it out together. we like it this way

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  3. OT, but I’m very sad to say that Pete Seeger has died, at age 94. I had been intending to write to him for some time, but I never got around to it (mainly because I was superstitious and was afraid if I sent my fan letter, I’d find out the next day that he’d passed away Well…). He had a long and rich life, created a lot of art, entertained a lot of people, and passed on a lot of tradition and history. I only hope to be half as active–in both the physical and political sense–when I’m in my 70s, much less my 90s. Heck, I could take lessons from Pete right now. I think and hope that’s something we’ll be doing for a long, long time: taking lessons from Pete.

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    1. I agree, Crow Girl, the world has lost one its shining lights. Seems like everything you can say about Pete sounds like a cliche, so I’ll just shut up and think. I, too, am saddened by his passing.

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  4. Husband’s CPAP machine doesn’t in itself have a personality, but it gives my husband an alter ego when he wears it. With the handsome grey hose protruding from the mask over his nostrils, husband has dubbed himself “Cornelius, the oldest and wisest of all the elephants” (from the Babar stories).

    Thanks, by the way, for all your kind words last night regarding my parents.

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  5. Welcome back Dale. And thanks for the Dolphin video yesterday; that was fun.
    I think today’s question is one of your best!

    My first thought is the lightboard here at the college has the most personality. As someone said yesterday, it does exactly what I told it to do. But I’m sure when I’ve told it to do that other times it either did or didn’t do what I wanted and so I thought *that* was the way to do it… but now it doesn’t agree with me. There’s a shiny spot on the wall of the booth where I bang my head.
    I’m going to try and remember to think about this the rest of the day. I must have more machines with personality…

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    1. There is a very old light board at the high school here with the brand name of , I think, Leprechaun. It has the personality of one, I am told by the high school theatre director.

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  6. Well, all of our electronics have Harry Potter names, but mostly, they either need more power or refuse to speak to us and/or each other.

    The car, having bled me to the point of threatening to replace it is now simply nickelling and diming me. I am at the garage again today- sideview mirror this time.

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  7. My Mactop – hands down. If something happened to it, I’d fly out the door to the Apple Store and immediately to replace it. Mactop provides me hours of entertainment as I passionately post opinions day after day. Between the cats and the computer, I’ve found a way to remain utterly sedentary (except for Saturday night dancing).

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  8. I’m not currently on intimate terms with any device, so I hope a few words about Pete Seeger would not be inappropriate here.

    There is a period of American history that is rarely taught in high school and really not that often in college history classes. As America industrialized before and after the turn of the 20th century, society tended to fall into two warring camps. Early American industry was ruled by powerful men, powerful and frequently ruthless. They managed their workers with an iron hand and kept them in virtually permanent deprivation. Union activism moved to America from Europe. It was met with violence. Wealthy industrialists worked with police departments and other authorities in the early decades of the 20th century to suppress unionism. Have you ever wondered why major cities had “armories” in central locations? That was to store firearms to be used against unruly workers when strikes got out of control.

    The Twin Cities did not escape this. battle. The infamous trucker’s strike ended in several deaths. You would not believe the photos from that clash. Factory thugs, strike breakers and cops were killing workers who were killing the other side.

    Enough background. I’ll do Pete in a separate post.

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    1. Mig
      Side view mirror is exactly the kind of sidestepping the garage I can advise on
      Also it’s not the car it’s you or someone or the parking lot. Remember when there was only a side mirror on the drivers side
      How did we get by?

      Now we farm it out to china and Ronald Reagan taught strike breaking with the air traffic controllers in the 80’s
      Pete was a lover of life a hater of stupidity and a voice for the underdog and repressed
      Where hAve all the flowers gone rings as loudly in my memory as we shall overcome

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  9. As my post above explained, there was one heckuva nasty fight in America in the early decades of the 20th century. The move to create and legitimize unions had a violent and a sweet side. The sweet side gave us Pete Seeger. Pete and folks like him worked to create solidarity for unions by singing union organizing songs. Pete associated with Communists, socialist and a great many lefty worker groups who met to use the power of song in union halls. They were optimistic, positive, naive and enthralled with the power of music to create social progress. In music, they embraced the music of “the folk” because so much of organized society was opposed to them. There was something pure and unsullied about the music of the folk, whereas tin pan alley and most other music outlets were allied with power groups.

    Thus, Pete’s background stamped him with lefty causes and a great faith in singing out as a way of improving the world. He has changed less than just about anyone I know. What a loving, positive force he has been.

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    2. Agreed, and thanks for the words, Steve. Pete spent much of his life trying to pass on that union-song tradition, and I hope that we remember it, because we need it as much now as we ever did. Cynical people would say that singing can’t change the world, but not singing isn’t going to change it any faster. Just maybe, a good song will give you a little more heart for the hard and dangerous work that changing the world requires.

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      1. People who claim singing can’t change the world have a lot to explain when it comes to an honest assessment of the impact of one song–“We Shall Overcome”–on American society. Fittingly, it was Pete Seeger who discovered the power of that song and who put it to work for social justice.

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        1. An excellent program covering Pete Seeger is available today on Democracy Now. You can get Democracy Now streaming over the internet at democracynow.org Of course you can listen to Democracy Now every week day morning on KFAI starting a 9 am. I wish more people would listen to this show which is very much in tune with Pete Seeger’s efforts to bring about change in a world that is in bad shape. Pete said we have a 50/50 chance of surviving as a people and he still remained hopeful that we can survive.

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      2. Sometimes singing can change the world.. thinking of the revolution in the Balkan states. I’ve been to the big amphitheatre in Taalin and it’s easy to imagine how life-altering it would be to see it full and hear the music.

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  10. Like Steve, I’m not really on speaking terms with any of my machines. They do what they do and I do what I’m supposed to do to keep them going, although my treadmill is overdue for some silicon. I guess the only one with any real personality (although unfortunately not in a good way) is the HD radio that I ran out and purchased as soon as we heard that Dale was going to do the Morning Show on HD. It doesn’t like to remember which station is Radio Heartland and it also thinks that it needs to re-set the date occasionally… I have to re-program it every month or so.

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  11. Is a banjo considered a device?

    I am reminded of Pete Seeger’s famous banjo, inscribed with the declaration “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”

    There’s personality!

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  12. Like vs, my HD radio is still my best friend, though I’ve never named it, because I still get to listen to Radio Heartland in the kitchen. Most everything else electrical here is neutral. The humidifiers are the most vocal non-radio appliance, and they’re constantly telling me to add water – one of them is quite noisy about it. My front porch Christmas lights still thank me every night that I remember to turn them on, which I will do till at least the end of January. They like keeping alive the Light in Great Darkness.

    I’m saving thoughts on Pete S. in case Dale has a post on him tomorrow.

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  14. OT: the reason for my absence (copy of letter just received on neck x-rays): after decoding the medical mumbo-jumbo, I have an explanation for much of my pain and increasing lack of finger control. Mostly I am either amused or indignant about such a communication. I choose amusement.
    http://birchwoodhill.wordpress.com/

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    1. I don’t know what to say. Medical mumbo-jumbo at best. Another description might be undecipherable gibberish. Where did they find all of that elaborate terminology?

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    2. Exuberant osteophytes, hmmm? I just hate it when they do that; all the shouting, laughing, and active jostling in your c-spine must be so annoying!

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