We had a chance to talk to the writer and journalist Rosa Montero at Robocity16 about Robotics, Art and Culture, about her concerns towards a foreseeable near future in which our relationship with robots will narrow.

When we talked about the ROS Film Festival, Rosa felt excited to join our jury and kindly answered some questions about how she imagines our future with robots.

Rosa feels a deep interest in science and is a big fan of science fiction. Two of her novels, “Lágrimas en la lluvia” (Tears in the Rain) (2011) and “El peso del corazón” (The weight of the heart) (2015), have a replicant of the 21st century as a protagonist, the android detective Bruna Husky.

During the round table we shared, Rosa addressed issues of great interest on our relationship with robots, such as the possibility that we develop some empathy for robots, even those who do not simulate a human appearance, and mentioned as an example the discomfort which can be experienced by viewing the robots testing videos by Boston Dynamics, where robots are kicked or hit with a stick in order to test their stability.

During the interview we had with her later on, a part of which we have reproduced in this post, she confessed that her favourite real robot is SIRI by Apple, which was a great help for her at a time when she was having some vision problems. She also declared herself a fan of  Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, and she expressed her admiration for the cult film Blade Runner, establishing a certain connection between the film’s imaginary and the futuristic Madrid of 2109 built for her Bruna Husky saga, in which replicants are matured in an accelerated manner in gestation plants and have a life cycle limited 10 years.

Rosa Montero has a long and successful career as a journalist, working since 1976 for the national newspaper El País. Her first fiction book, the novel “Crónica del desamor” (Chronicle of a heratbreak), appeared in 1979 and she has since published more than a dozen novels, plus short stories and children’s books. Her work has been translated into more than twenty languages, she is Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Puerto Rico, National Journalism Award 1984 and International Award Columnists of the World 2014. You can find out more about her through her work or her Website. You can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

*TN: “Retrato Robot” is a Photofit portrait or facial composite (a graphical representation of an eyewitness’s memory of a face, as recorded by a composite artist).

 

Translated by Olga Lledó Oliver