Written and drawn by Joe Chiappetta
"I used to do a lot of things that made no sense," said the retired old robot, reflecting on his many and varied centuries of service to humanity.
"Used to?" exclaimed his upgraded replacement robots, with sly, cold chuckles.
"Hey," defended the old robot, "I am mainly talking about my short but colorful career as a doodle art curator. That's what the humans wanted me to do, so I did it to the best of my programing. Some humans believe there's an untapped market for doodles--and so do I. Such free-flowing subconscious works are much more important than most people think."
"That's what you keep telling us," added one of the new robots. "Remind us again why they retired you from that nonsense position?"
With conviction, the old robot replied, "Well, the humans were looking for a robot who could rank and price each fine art doodle based on market sentiments. But I personally think all doodles are equally marvelous. The humans declared this to be a serious flaw in my code. They said I made no sense. Yet what I have is not a flaw: it's a key feature."
Later that night, as he had been doing for years, the old robot set to work creating his own series of doodles. Convinced that doodling was a uniquely human trait, he too set out to master the ways of the doodle. He too would one day be more human.
That bit where the old curator refused to rank doodles by market mood hit me. Calling that a flaw felt cold, since treating every mark as worthy, that’s a roBOt trying to value humans, not just prices, even if the markets would short circuit over it. His nightly doodling to grow more human is oddly sweet and and defnitely relatable. Sometimes the nonsense is actually the compass, and you nailed that tension between commerce and care.
Thanks so much! I think about such tensions a lot: commerce v care, human v robot. o glad you see the same things.
yeah, same here. Those pulls keep the story alive, where the bot learns to pick care over price tags and and sees every doodle as a person’s spark. Funny how that feels more human than our market reflexes, and it kinda nudges me to keep thnking about value beyond sales.
This is so creative man! I was intrigued by the art cause it was uniquely beautiful and went ahead to read the whole thing. It is by far the best thing I've read this morning, it's creative and interesting. Thankyou for sharing this with us;)
Wow thanks for the compliment. I am very grateful that you saw depth in my work and that it all came together.