Robotics experimentation used to be relegated to places like college campuses, R & D labs, and NASA. But today, amateurs, professionals, and enthusiasts from all walks of life are building robots for televised battles and entering contests that have cropped up all over the world.

The public’s interest in robotics isn’t new. If you look back over the past 40-plus years of movies and television, you’ll notice plenty of plots involving robots. Some of the earlier ones were more for the sci-fi crowd—The Colossus of New York (1958) and Gigantor (1965)—but the trend caught on quickly with movies like Star Wars (1977) and The Terminator (1984).

The difference between then and now is that people don’t just want to watch anymore, they want to be a part of the action. After cutting Mystery Science Theater 3000 (picked up by the Sci Fi Channel), Comedy Central started airing BattleBots, which has definitely found its way into popular culture. Everyone wants to compete; the contestants range from teenagers to 50-year-olds, cashiers to professional engineers.

You won’t find a ton of scholarly research about popular culture; scholars predominantly study high art instead. Many scholars view popular culture as simplistic and low brow, and thus undeserving of their attention. Popular culture is inherently for the masses, which, they argue, means it’s dumbed down—stripped of the complexities that would make it difficult to be understood and accepted by the lowest common denominator.

I disagree with this position. For one thing, elements of pop culture aren’t simplistic. (OK, some pop culture is completely stupid (Joe Millionaire) and aimed squarely at simpletons.) Take popular fiction, for example. Are the messages about society, gender, class, or race the same in novels by Stephen King, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, and Zora Neale Hurston? Or, how about music: Britney Spears, The Rolling Stones, Elvis, Eminem, and the Dixie Chicks? The thing about pop culture is that there’s something in it for everyone, which is what makes it successful, and what makes it representative of society. Elements of popular culture say something about who we are.

So, what does the growing interest in robotics say about society? You can usually approximate when something moved into the realm of popular culture. I guess for technology it was the day when 10-year-olds demonstrated a better working knowledge of the $1500 family computer than their parents. Somewhere along the way, understanding and applying technology rather than just using it became popular. People now seem to have a vested interest in being a part of the engineering. You can see it in the way advertisements have changed: manufacturers don’t just market computers, they tout the processor power, memory size, and networking capability.

It might seem strange to put engineering and technology in a category with Dave Matthews Band, the GAP, SUVs, Coke, and Friends, but it fits. I think that says something decidedly positive about society.

jennifer.huber@circuitcellar.com

Published: April 2003