Provocation | The Robot that Changed my Life > A Malfunction in Humanity

1980’s movies and television provided the children back then with stunning visions of robotics. Most of the time the screen displayed a huge robot, gigantic metal monsters who shoot and kill, sometimes colliding into an even bigger battle monster, fictional robots that echo the spirit of the times. The Cold War was at one of its most frightening peaks; in Western society, widening economic gaps led to hardship and crime, and overall, a deep sense of disorder. The fears are evident in numerous films from the period that depicted war and power. Often, hope came from robots, from Robocop to Macron 1. But there were also movies that showed different kind of robots. Not metal saviors or evil monsters, but sensitive, delicate creatures who gave their all to tell us: we are not the instruments of destruction you think we are. A call that fell on deaf ears. Heard by few.

Number 5 is alive!” – the famous cry of Johnny 5 from Short Circuit (1986)

Johnny 5 from the movie Short Circuit (1986) is a heartwarming example. On the surface, a war-robot film about robots, war, and the weapon industry (though this ’80s movie starring Steve Guttenberg clearly has other intentions). Johnny gets struck by lightning. His system malfunctions, causing him to develop awareness and emotions and try to escape his original purpose as a war machine. In the movie he forms a friendship with an animal therapist who treats him like a human, he discovers the world through her and she discovers him. The corporation that built him chases Johnny 5, attempts to return him and compel him to fulfill his original purpose as a military robot, despite his will. Johnny flees the corporation, struggles to maintain his unique identity, his very consciousness, and his choice of a different life. He firmly refuses to submit to the militarism he was born into. He becomes famous for his comic-tragic declaration: “Number 5 is Alive.”

Johnny 5 was an inspiration for the character of WALL-E (Disney/Pixar, 2008)

Flight of the Navigator (1986, a remake is allegedly in development), is another movie that combined a robot in an original way, at the time. In this case it was an alien robot, an autonomous probe lost in space or on a mission, collecting life samples for the alien civilization that sent it. The samples are examined, studied and returned to their native environments. The alien-robot collects a human sample from Earth; a 12-year-old boy. The boy returns home, but while for the boy only a few hours passed during the intergalactic journey (erased from his memory), on Earth, six long years had passed. The boy is taken by Nasa; there he reunites with the autonomous probe who abducted him (the probe short‑circuited after encountering high‑voltage lines, and was captured by the space agency). The reunion between the boy and the robot creates an amusing and touching relationship, in which the robot develops human emotions. Much like Johnny 5, the Navigator, “Max”, is torn between his original mission and his newfound emotions. At the boy’s request, he risks everything, including both their lives, to return the boy to his original timeline and continue his journey.

The boy David and beside him the robotic navigator Max (“Trimaxion”), from Flight of the Navigator (1986)

Both Johnny 5 and Max offer a different perspective on robotics and humanity. The question we face isn’t what will happen when a machine develops awareness, independence or emotions, but how will humans react to machines that have feelings, machines that refuse to live up to our original expectations, and ask to be treated differently, or God forbid, ask for equality?

There’s another lesson here, relevant as ever. By analogy, we might ask what will happen when humans are required to see their entire environment not as a material‑resource to serve their needs, but as a shared space in which all beings are equal, the equality of all creation. Johnny 5 is forced to flee for his life from humans who do not see him as a living being. Max the Navigator and the boy confront each other, and the boy is forced to beg Max for help. What will happen when humans themselves must beg for their lives before their environment? And maybe we’re already there?