I found The City of Robots extremely intriguing. Eco states “The pleasure
of imitation, as the ancients knew, is one of the most innate in the human
spirit; but here we not only enjoy a perfect imitation, we also enjoy the
conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will
always be inferior to it” (204).
When I was in middle school, I was
introduced to a website where you could watch a natural African watering hole
through a webcam. This definitely took a lot of patience since it was
unpredictable when the animals would do something interesting, or would even be
there. Everyone knew that the best time to log on and watch would be late at
night because of the time zone, but still it was never guaranteed that you
would get to see anything interesting. I compare this to the immediate
gratification and satisfaction that we get from zoo’s, specifically at Disney’s
Animal Kingdom. Here we are taken through mock safaris and get to see all of
these animals in action. The construction of this habitat allows us to be able
to experience the wildlife, as Disney controls its feeding times, training, and
overall the animals structured way of living. This is an example of Eco’s idea
of “reconstruction with hyper-realistic detail” (201).
Below is a link to a live African
watering hole in Botswana, Africa. As you can see, majority of the time you don’t
see any action, which overall makes us impatient and unsatisfied. Why sit and
wait for something that might never come when you can go to Animal Kingdom, or
the zoo and be guaranteed to see these animals in action. Going to the Disney
parks, and being exposed to “The City of Robots” is exactly the demand for
immediate gratification that is prominent in our human nature.
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