I remember reading one of the robot novels by Asimov where some people discover these giant machines in orbit around their planet. The machines had been there for eons, but went un-noticed until they started to break down. The machines were put in place by the robots in an effort to safeguard the people by subtly controlling the peoples aggression. The people were oblivious to the brain wave machines because they had feature that made them impossible to detect. They weren't invisible or camouflaged. It's just that if you tried to look at one directly, you would become confused and instinctively look away. Even if you were looking right at the machine, your brain wouldn't register it.
I'm that way with important things (Ex: the future, relationships, etc.). Like all good moms, my mother has been collecting the paraphernalia of my life. Example: childhood drawings, report cards, pictures, journals, ribbons, newspaper clippings, etc. She made my brother and I a plastic rubbermaid bin each of our stuff. She felt that it was time for us to have our history in a bucket. This kind of creeped me out. I liked the thought that she was still keeping everything safe. After Christmas, she asked me to look through everything with her. It gave me this fight or flight response. I didn't want to consider my mortality so soon after a lonely holiday weekend. Long story short, I ended up ignoring the instinct and looking through everything with my mom. It was okay. In fact it gave me some peace for about an hour.
I'm that way with important things (Ex: the future, relationships, etc.). Like all good moms, my mother has been collecting the paraphernalia of my life. Example: childhood drawings, report cards, pictures, journals, ribbons, newspaper clippings, etc. She made my brother and I a plastic rubbermaid bin each of our stuff. She felt that it was time for us to have our history in a bucket. This kind of creeped me out. I liked the thought that she was still keeping everything safe. After Christmas, she asked me to look through everything with her. It gave me this fight or flight response. I didn't want to consider my mortality so soon after a lonely holiday weekend. Long story short, I ended up ignoring the instinct and looking through everything with my mom. It was okay. In fact it gave me some peace for about an hour.
Okay, so I think I conquered the whole looking back thing. Now I gotta get comfortable staring the future in the face. I mean making deliberate actions seriously, not going balls out and hoping for the best. I got my own machine in the sky distracting me from making progress. Call it procrastination. I know what I need to do. Something about it scares me or makes me uncomfortable, so I do something meaningless and things don't change. I've been like the underpants gnomes. Phase 1: Collect Underpants. Phase 3: Huge Profits.
We all know that Phase 2 is going to have to be dealt with soon. You can't pay rent with underpants. But don't worry, I'll get to Phase 2 as soon as I'm done writing the blog after this one. -BlogEnd
5 comments:
You are actually referring to the Homecoming series by Orson Scott Card. 5 books starting with "The Memory of Earth" and ending in "Earthfall" The agression controlling machine was called the oversoul.
Nothing like that ever happened in the robot novels.
Oh, and the machines weren't in space. They were actually on the ground inside a hermetically energy-shielded bubble.
You guys are right about Orscon Scott Card. But I still think there was a foundation book or extra robot novel where they found out that the robots were controlling people in an effort to keep them safe and they were doing it with These giant satalites in orbit.
I belive they called these machines Giskard Devices or Giskard Machines. Somebody help me out here.
You have it backwards, the Giskardians did not use mind control as it would conflict with the 3 laws. As the Giskardians could not accept the zeroeth law, they were unable to guard the course of humanity as a whole. The zeroeth law robots led by R. Daniel Olivaw had the mind control devices.
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