Technophobia and Robot Agency in Asimov’s I, Robot

Abstract

Written by Russian author and scientist Isaac Asimov in 1950, I, Robot is a collection of nine stories interwoven together through the relationships between humans and machines in the future, around the 2040s. The narrator of the book, a journalist, recounts the stories while a robopsychologist, Dr Susan Calvin, reports him the “robotic” incidents that she has encountered in the company, U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, since the beginning of the new technology age. Depicting the inner system of the company, Dr Susan Calvin provides information about the nature and the laws of the robotics, and how the laws have been violated or reversed at times and how the robots are discriminated by humans because of technophobia. Most of the robots in the stories acquire autonomy, consciousness and agency disturbing the well-set system of robotics which is designed to protect human beings in the first place. Hence, this study aims to analyse technophobia and the matter of embodying agency by robots in especially six stories in Asimov’s book with reference to the posthuman theory and the biography of the author. Finally, it will dissect the film I, Robot as an adaptation of the book from the perspective of posthumanism.