Tag Archives: robots

Short Story of the Day, Flash Fiction, How We Coped with the Giant Robots by Anna Cabe

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Aimless extension of knowledge, however, which is what I think you really mean by the term curiosity, is merely inefficiency. I am designed to avoid inefficiency.”

― Isaac Asimov, The Caves of Steel

Bikes and Robots Hickory Street Dallas, Texas

From my old journal, The Daily Epiphany, February 15, 1999:

Shit, what a long, tiring day. Oh, look at the top of the page, it’s a Monday. No wonder.

I sat the morning through a two hour Lotus Notes class, a professional trainer, twenty years younger than me explained in excruciating detail everything I already knew and displayed his ability to scrunch up his nose when I asked a question.

Meanwhile, the hourly folks in the class had a lot of trouble. I really felt sorry for them, the instructor would rattle off, “click here, go back, minimize.” He would always say click when he should have said double click. Not that the poor hourly guys can double click anyway. They are used to terminal emulators with tacked up dog-eared Xerox copies of lists of odd key combinations. They’ll be alright, they’ll get gooey eventually. Those tough callused hands trying to push a mouse around, that look of confusion; it’s a difficult world.

I spent most of the class leaning slightly forward with my eyes closed rubbing the corners of my lids.

The rest of the workday was meetings. More lid-rubbing.

I didn’t really do anything, did I? I sure was exhausted when I came home. My head was splitting, my right ear isn’t working again, I should have gone to a cycling class, but I booted. I should have played with the kids, worked on the garage, written some stuff, read some chapters, but I didn’t.

All I managed to do was flounder around horizontally, watching some sports on TV.

And rubbing the corners of my eyelids ’til the headache finally went away.

And today’s flash fiction:

How We Coped with the Giant Robots by Anna Cabe

from Gordon Square Review

Anna Cabe Homepage

Anna Cabe Twitter

Build More Robots and Learn How To Make Them Better

Posted on by Bill Chance

Control Voice: [opening narration] God looked upon his world and called it good. But man was not content. He looked for ways to make it better and built machines to do the work. But in vain we build the world, unless the builder also grows.

Control Voice: [closing narration] Out of every disaster a little progress is made. Man will build more robots and learn how to make them better. And, given enough time, he may learn how to do the same for himself.
—- The Outer Limits, I, Robot [2.09]

Bikes and Giant Robots
Hickory Street
Dallas, Texas

Photo taken on the Hidden Art Bicycle Tour. This is a larger view of the mural I wrote about here, and right next to this one.

Oblique Strategy: Do something boring

If a robot is of sufficient intelligence does it obtain a soul? If it thinks… is it therefore am? What do these robots think of the horde of human supplicants arriving astride simple devices of metal tube, chain, and rubber? They seem to have come a long way to see the robots.

But they aren’t of sufficient intelligence to claim souls. They don’t think, therefore they aren’t. As a matter of fact, they are only paint. Even though they look like giant robots and loom over the world, they are less than one one-hundredth of an inch thick. If you peeled them from the building they would collapse into dust. They aren’t robots in the real world… only in the minds of the observers, the bicycle riders.

And maybe on the internet.

Robots on the Walls

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You mean old books?”
“Stories written before space travel but about space travel.”
“How could there have been stories about space travel before –”
“The writers,” Pris said, “made it up.”
― Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Hickory and Trunk Streets, Dallas, Texas

On our Hidden Art Bicycle Ride today we came across a building with robots painted on it. A very large building, but one on a street you don’t drive on very often. I had been there before, many times, on a bicycle, but the robots weren’t there. It was cool to see.