Beyond the Uncanny Valley: Masahiro Mori and Philip K. Dick's: Do androids dream of electric sheep?

Configurations

Volumn 21, Issue 3, 2013, Pages 301-329

  Rhee, Jennifer ^a  

^a VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 84899145092     PISSN: 10631801     EISSN: 10806520     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/con.2013.0022     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. Other roundtable participants included philosophy professor Natsuhiko Yoshida and science-fction writer Sakyo Komatsu. Energy is published by Esso, a subsidiary of Standard Oil Company.
2. Norri Kageki, "An Uncanny Mind," IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 19:2 (2012): 112, 106, 108.
3. Unless explicitly stated, I will be working from the 2012 translation.
4. Masahiro Mori, "The Uncanny Valley," trans. Karl F. MacDorman and Norri Kageki, IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 19:2 (2012): 98-100, quote on p. 99.
5. "As this myoelectric hand makes movements, it could make healthy people feel uneasy".
6. Mori continues to stand by this recommendation;
7. Kageki, "Uncanny Mind" (above, n. 1), p. 106.
8. We might also understand Mori's wariness of movement in robotic design through movement's existence in time, because to introduce movement is to introduce time.
9. This lack of distinction between initial uncanniness and habituation over time is particularly relevant, as Mori is participating in a larger conversation about designing robotic technologies for regular human use.
10. Breazeal modeled Kismet's interactivities on adult/infant interactions, thus encouraging humans to take the lead in these interactions, while similarly keeping expectations for Kismet's performance low.
11. Cynthia L. Breazeal, Designing Sociable Robots (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), pp. 39-40. The demonstration videos can be viewed at http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/sociable/videos.html.
12. Lucy A. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfgurations: Plans and Situated Actions, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 246.
13. Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), p. 56 (emphasis added).
14. Kageki, "Uncanny Mind" (above, n. 1), pp. 112, 106.
15. Prior to this interview, several roboticists have critiqued Mori's theorization of the uncanny valley on the grounds that it is largely "speculation," and not based on empirical or theoretical evidence. Regarding the adherence to the uncanny valley despite the speculative nature of its claims, David Hanson argues that "Mori put forth the uncanny valley as speculation, not as a true scientific theory. But he drew it as a graph, and that made it seem more scientific. It's not a scientific hypothesis that was tested with data, though".
16. Tom Geller, "Overcoming the Uncanny Valley," IEEE Computer Graphics and Applica-tions 28:4 [2008]: 11-17, quote on p. 12
17. And Frances Gee and colleagues, while not critical of Mori's theory, point to a gap between the uncanny valley's wide circulation and its substantiation: "The acceptance of the 'Uncanny Valley' is widespread, although the empirical data has yet to fully substantiate Mori's concept".
18. Gee, Will Browne, and Kazuhiko Kawamura, "Uncanny Valley Revisited," in Proceedings of the IEEE International Workshop on Robots and Human Interactive Communication, Nashville, August 13-15, 2005, pp. 151-157, quote on p. 153
19. Christoph Bartneck, Takayuki Kanda, Hiroshi Ishiguro, and Norihiro Hagita, "Is the Uncanny Valley an Uncanny Cliff?" in Proceedings of the 16th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, Jeju, Korea, August 26-29, 2007, pp. 368-373
20. Angela Tinwell and Mark Grimshaw, "Bridging the Uncanny: An Impossible Traverse?" in Proceedings of the 13th International MindTrek Conference: Everyday Life in the Ubiquitous Era, Tampere, Finland, September 30-October 2, 2009, pp. 66-73.
21. For example: "Thus, given [industrial robots'] lack of resemblance to human beings, in general, people hardly feel any affinity for them"; "Children seem to feel deeply attached to these toy robots." And, finally, "many of our readers have experienced interacting with persons with physical disabilities, and all must have felt sympathy for those missing a hand or legs and wearing a prosthetic limb" (Mori, "Uncanny Valley" [above, n. 4], p. 98).
22. While Mori's theory emerged from intuition, recent studies have identified an uncanny valley effect in humans and animals.
23. David J. Lewkowicz and Asif A. Ghanzanfar, "The Development of the Uncanny Valley in Infants," Developmental Psychobiology 54:2 (2012): 124-132.
24. Wade J. Mitchell, Kevin A. Szerszen Sr., Amy Shirong Lu, Paul W. Schermerhorn, Matthias Scheutz, and Karl F. MacDorman, "A Mismatch in the Human Realism of Face and Voice Produces an Uncanny Valley," I-Perception 2:1 (2011): 10-12.
25. Shawn A. Steckenfnger and Asif A. Ghanzanfar, "Monkey Visual Behavior Falls into the Uncanny Valley," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 106:43 (2009): 18362-18366.
26. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfigurations (above, n. 12), p. 245.
27. Diana Fuss, ed., "Introduction," in Human, All Too Human (New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 1-7.
28. Dick's work is doubly relevant here, not only because of the centrality of the uncanny and humanoids in his factions, but also because of the portrayals of disability in these same works. For example, see Michael Bérubé's discussion of intellectual disability in Dick's Martian Time-Slip.
29. Bérubé, "Narrative and Intellectual Disability," in A Companion to American Literary Studies, ed. Caroline F. Levander and Robert S. Levine [New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011], pp. 469-482.
30. Within this approach, it is of particular importance to engage the nonneutrality of these boundaries in relation to their funding structures, including major robotics funder DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and its militarized priorities.
31. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfigurations (above, n. 12), p. 239.
32. In 2007, Christoph Bartneck and colleagues questioned earlier English translations of shinwakan as familiarity, suggesting that these deviate somewhat from the original Japanese: "We also questioned whether Mori's shinwa-kan [sic] concept might have been 'lost in translation,' and in consultation with several Japanese linguists, we discovered that shinwa-kan is not a commonly used word, nor does it have a direct equivalent in English. In fact, 'familiarity' appeared to be the least suitable translation compared to 'affinity' and in particular to likeability'"
33. Bartneck et al., "Is the Uncanny Valley an Uncanny Cliff?" p. 369.
34. The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following definitions of familiar: "Known from constant association; pertaining to every-day knowledge, well-known"; "Of every-day use, common, current, habitual, ordinary, usual" (Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. "familiar." http://www.oed.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/view/Entry/67957?redirectedFrom=familiar#eid).
35. The 2005 translation's use of familiar brings Mori's essay into closer conversation with Sigmund Freud's well-known essay "The Uncanny," in which he describes the uncanny as "that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar" Note
36. Freud, "The Uncanny" in Collected Papers, vol. 4, trans. Alix Strachey, ed. Ernest Jones [London: Hogarth Press, 1949], pp. 368-407
37. Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. "affnity." http://www.oed.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/view/Entry/3417?redirectedFrom=affnity#eid.
38. Philip K. Dick, "The Android and the Human," in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, ed. Lawrence Sutin (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), pp. 183-210, quote on p. 187.
39. David Hanson, Andrew Olney, Ismar A. Pereira, and Marge Zielke, "Upending the Uncanny Valley," in Proceedings of the 20th National Conference on Artificial Intelligence and the 17th Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence Conference, July 9-13, 2005, Pittsburgh, ed. Manuela M. Veloso and Subbarao Kambhampati (Cambridge, MA: AAAI Press/MIT Press, 2005), pp. 25-31, quote on p. 26.
40. Employing software developed by Andrew Olney and drawing on Dick's own writings, the Philip K. Dick android is a conversing mechanical replica of the famous author. For a detailed history of the android's construction, disappearance, and recreation.
41. David F. Dufty, How to Build an Android: The True Story of Philip K. Dick's Robotic Resurrection (New York: Henry Holt, 2012).
42. For Hanson's interventions in Mori's uncanny valley theory.
43. Hanson, Olney, Pereira, and Zielke, "Upending the Uncanny Valley" (above, n. 27).
44. Hanson, Olney, Pereira, and Zielke, "Upending the Uncanny Valley" (above, n. 27), p. 26.
45. Hanson's robotic vision owes a particular debt to Dick's novels Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and We Can Build You (David Hanson, e-mail message to author, January 5, 2010).
46. In How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), N. Katherine Hayles discusses the connections between cybernetics and the destabilizing presence of androids in Dick's factions. In particular, she highlights the android as a boundary-destabilizing presence: "the android is a hybrid figure-part human, part machine-whose very existence calls boundaries into question" (p. 177).
47. Dick's short story Human Is, in which a woman is unsure if her husband has been replaced by an alien look-alike. As the story progresses, the woman discovers that her husband has, in fact, been replaced, but the alien look-alike is a much kinder soul than her mean and brutish "human" husband.
48. Philip K. Dick, "Human Is," in The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, vol. 2: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (New York: Carol Publishing Group, 1995), pp. 257-267.
49. Patricia S. Warrick, "The Labyrinthian Process of the Artifcial: Philip K. Dick's Androids and Mechanical Constructs," in Philip K. Dick, ed. Martin Harry Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander (New York: Taplinger Publishing, 1983), pp. 189-214, esp. pp. 191-192.
50. Kim Stanley Robinson, The Novels of Philip K. Dick (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1984), p. 29.
51. Philip K. Dick, "Imposter," in Collected Stories (above, n. 31), pp. 299-310, quote on p. 302.
52. Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (New York: Random House, 1968), p. 8.
53. Empathy is a primary defining characteristic of humans in the novel; indeed, Dick redefines the human around empathy, such that empathetic and compassionate androids are more "human" than cruel, heartless, and unempathetic humans.
54. "Our minds, Isidore decided. They're fighting for control of our psychic selves; the empathy box on one hand, Buster's guffaws and off-the-cuff jibes on the other" (Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [above, n. 35], p. 75).
55. In the name of revering living animals, Hannibal Sloat is cruelly insensitive to John (pp. 77-82). And android bounty-hunter Phil Resch is mercilessly unempathetic toward androids, almost gleefully advising Rick to sleep with female androids before killing them (pp. 143-144).
56. More than once, android Irmgard demonstrates concern for John's feelings (pp. 159, 210-211).
57. Darko Suvin, "The Opus: Artifce as Refuge and World View (Introductory Refections)," in On Philip K. Dick: 40 Articles from Science-Fiction Studies, ed. R. D. Mullen, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Arthur B. Evans, and Veronica Hollinger (Greencastle, IN: SF-TH, 1992), pp. 2-15, quote on p. 14.
58. Suvin presents Dick's writings in three periods: 1952-1962 marks the period of apprenticeship; 1963-1965 is "a high plateau" during which Dick created "masterpieces," including Martian Time-Slip and Dr. Bloodmoney; Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? falls in the third period (1966-1974), which for Suvin marks Dick's creative decline (p. 2).
59. Robinson, Novels of Philip K. Dick (above, n. 33), p. 91. John Huntington reads the narrative shifts and contradictions in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? through Dick's use of the van Vogt method, in which a new idea is introduced every 800 words. It should be noted that Huntington's research did not find explicit acknowledgment of Dick's use of the method.
60. Huntington, "Philip K. Dick: Authenticity and Insincerity," in On Philip K. Dick (above, n. 40), pp. 170-177, esp. p. 172.
61. Karen Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), p. 33 (emphasis in original).
62. This likelihood is raised earlier in the novel by Rick's boss (Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [above, n. 35], pp. 37-39).
63. That Rachael is revealed as an android because she disregards the gender of the owl interestingly infects Alan Turing's imitation game (what we now know as the "Turing test"). Turing's imitation game begins with a man and a woman competing to be identified as a woman by a third human; Turing then asks us to consider this game if the woman were replaced by a machine. Prevailing understandings of the Turing test dispense entirely with the question of gender around which Turing centrally organized his imitation game. By returning gender both to the project of distinguishing between human and machine and to the project of being human, this scene can be read as a striking critique of the various ways in which gender has largely been written out of the Turing test. In Dick's novel, it is precisely the act of doing away with gender that identifies one as not-human.
64. "'If you sold your owl,' he said to the girl Rachael Rosen, 'how much would you want for it, and how much of that down?'" (Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [above, n. 35], p. 42.
65. Indeed, earlier in this scene, Rachael refers to Bill the raccoon as "he," further highlighting the possibility that her use of "it" when referencing the owl emerged from the distinction between living and mechanical animals, rather than from between living and mechanical humans (p. 41).
66. Hayles, How We Became Postmodern (above, n. 30), p. 162.
67. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (above, n. 35), p. 92.
68. The novel oscillates between the language of "killing" androids and "retiring" androids. The former humanizes androids and dehumanizes android bounty-hunters, while the latter dehumanizes androids and defects the inhumanity of those who destroy them.
69. Galvan describes the trajectory of the novel as, against the designs and control techniques of the state, Rick coming to terms with a "posthuman community, one in which humans and androids coexist and cooriginate."
70. Jill Galvan, "Entering the Posthuman Collective in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Science Fiction Studies 24:3 (1997): 413-429, esp. p. 426.
71. For Galvan's discussion of Jean Baudrillard on language, reciprocity, and mass media, see pp. 420-421.
72. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (above, n. 35), pp. 102-103.
73. Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (New York: Verso Books, 2007), p. 374.
74. Further de-authorizing Rick's initial identifcation of Rachael through her referencing the owl as "it," Resch repeatedly refers to Buffy, his living squirrel, as "it".
75. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? [above, n. 35], p. 128.
76. Demonstrating the android cogito's "rift in self-consciousness," Resch empathizes with androids moments before he shoots Luba Luft. Standing in front of Edvard Munch's The Scream, Resch muses: "'I think,' Phil Resch said, 'that this is how an andy must feel.' He traced in the air the convolutions, visible in the picture, of the creature's cry. 'I don't feel like that, so maybe I'm not an-' He broke off as several persons strolled up to inspect the picture" (pp. 130-131).
77. "If telepathy is admitted it will be necessary to tighten our test up. To put the competitors into a 'telepathy-proof room' would satisfy all requirements"
78. Alan M. Turing, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," Mind 59:36 (1950): 433-460, esp. p. 454.
79. Laurence A. Rickels, I Think I Am Philip K. Dick (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), p. 315.
80. According to Rickels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was, in part, Dick's response to the Turing test (p. 312).
81. The anonymous reader astutely observes that, on account of both the prominence of the paranormal in Dick's works and his racing writing process, this telepathic communication is more likely the result of error than intention. Nonetheless, Rick and John's multiple sites of unspoken yet shared knowledge about a living spider are striking and worth exploring.
82. Patricia S. Warrick, Mind in Motion: The Fiction of Philip K. Dick (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1987), pp. 117-132.
83. Dick himself describes the contrast between John's love for androids and Rick's murderous relation with androids as "in some ways the primary story"
84. Philip K. Dick, "Notes on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings, ed. Lawrence Sutin (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), pp. 155-161, esp. pp. 155-156.
85. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (above, n. 35), p. 205.
86. Moments before Rick kills the remaining androids, Mercer also appears to him, independent of the empathy box (pp. 220-221).
87. This telepathy between John and Rick may be reciprocal. Upon first meeting android Roy Baty, John has a hallucinatory flash of mechanical parts that fades back out onto Roy's figure (p. 159). This flash can be read as a telepathic communication with Rick, who had just killed Luba Luft and confronted the cold-blooded androidism of Phil Resch (pp. 134-144).
88. For example, as Hayles describes the novel's conclusion: "no big problems are solved here. Only a modest accommodation has been reached, infused with multiple ironies, that emphasizes survival and the mixed condition of humans who are at their best when they show tolerance and affection for the creatures, biological and mechanical, with whom they share the planet" (How We Became Postmodern [above, n. 30], p. 191). According to Warrick, "[a]t the end the reader discovers no pat answer. According to Dick none is available" (Mind in Motion [above, n. 64], p. 121). And Robinson describes the novel's reader as needing to hold simultaneously shifting and contradicting realities and elemental conventions throughout (Novels of Philip K. Dick [above, n. 33], p. 26), a need that quite closely mirrors that of Rick Deckard as his day progresses.
89. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (above, n. 35), p. 227.
90. Dick continues to explore this paradox in his writing, perhaps most extensively in his unfnished gnostic investigation The Exegesis, a sprawling work comprised of almost 9,000 mostly handwritten pages. Richard Doyle incisively describes Dick's The Exegesis in this way: "The theme is: total knowledge is only possible through the paradoxical acceptance of total mystery, an erasure of everything we think we know"
91. Doyle, "A Stairway to Eleusis: PKD, Perennial Philosopher," in The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, ed. Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem (New York: Houghton Miffin Harcourt Publishing, 2011), pp. 897-900, quote on p. 900.
92. Sections of The Exegesis have recently been published as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, ed. Pamela Jackson and Jonathan Lethem (New York: Houghton Miffin Harcourt Publishing, 2011).
93. As Lejla Kucukalic offers regarding the novel: "fake people and animals may be preferable to the complete deadness of the universe"; Note
94. Kucukalic, Philip K. Dick: Canonical Writer of the Digital Age (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 8.
95. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (above, n. 35), p. 4.
96. Galvan, "Entering the Posthuman Collective" (above, n. 54), p. 426.
97. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfgurations (above, n. 12), p. 285.
98. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway (above, n. 42), p. 187.
99. Suchman, Human-Machine Reconfgurations (above, n. 12), p. 285 (emphasis added).