What Is the Aging Robot?

I learned of the concept of the Robot in the introduction of a book I read long ago by Colin Wilson. Wilson’s description only occupied two pages, and I don’t think he discussed it again in any of his many subsequent books. The term never caught on with other philosophers or psychologists but for some reason it stuck with me.

Wilson’s Robot is simply the part of our brain that does our ordinary tasks for us so we can think about other stuff. Driving is the classic example. Driving is a complicated and dangerous task, but we do it so often that our Robot has learned the process so well that we can listen to music, podcasts, talk on the phone, or daydream while we drive. We have all had the experience of arriving at our destination and being surprised that we cannot recall the actual trip.

When you think about the Robot, you begin to see how useful and how frequent it is operating in our daily lives. Almost every common regular daily task is controlled by our robot. Wilson said that the Robot, while efficient, had a downside. It dulled everyday experience. The Robot had no appreciation for beauty, or delight, or wonder, it simply just got the job done. Wilson advised that we should be aware of this dulling and work to reduce its influence and control over so much of our lives.

Jump ahead fifty years from when I read Wilson and I’m now an eighty-year-old. Senior moments are becoming more frequent. And when one day I found an empty coffee cup in my fridge, I stepped back and asked why. Clearly what must have happened was that while putting away dishes I placed the empty cup in the fridge. But why? For some reason Wilson’s robot came to mind as the culprit. The Robot made a mistake, a glitch, but again, why?

As I thought about it, I realized that virtually all of my recent senior moments could be blamed on my Robot making mistakes, and again asked, why now? The obvious conclusion was that just like my knees and my hearing it was getting old. My Robot was aging.

Thus, this book – The Aging Robot.