3 robots

I'm not sure I like this. Also, 7 other things worth your time.

There’s a character you see a lot in science fiction. Basically, you start with a futuristic world in which it’s mostly accepted as normal for androids to walk among us. Into that world, you place a gruff, old-school hero, who has total disdain and/or even hatred for all robots.

Examples:

• Harrison Ford in Star Wars, whose Han Solo is constantly annoyed by the presence of C3PO.

• Will Smith’s Del Spooner in I, Robot, whose defining characteristic is his nostalgia for a time before his own, in which technology hadn’t quite yet taken over all of society.

• Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in the Aliens movies. Given that a devious android disguised as a human nearly leads her to a gruesome death in the first movie, her antipathy is understandable.

Now, I think of myself as a very tech-friendly guy. But after indications over the last month or two that we’re at the dawn of the age of humanoid robots, I’ve noticed I’m moving hard and fast in the Solo-Spooner-Ripley direction.

I give you three tech t…