In both reality and fiction, we have lived with imaginaries of artificial life and automation. Those we are currently caught in are not new. In ancien tEgypt, humans were already consulting with statues. Homeros’s work on automata, self-moving machines using internal energy, is another example, and the Greek mathematician Hero of Alexandria presented the Aeolipilemachine (Hero engine) in the first century CE. Being in a relationship with a technological, artificial social object seems to be an easy part of what it isto be human and perhaps a way for us to understand ourselves, who we are, and what it means to be human. Over and over, we try to create an image ofourselves, or something or someone that acts on our behalf.
This chapter will discuss the relationship between human and robot, and the emotions, thoughts, and experiences such a relationship might evoke and involve. To access a human’s feelings and understandings of robots, anintrospective method is engaged, collecting my thoughts and responses to robots over a five-month period. Using inner dialogue and thoughts, three examples will be presented that show how past experiences impact new experiences of technology and demonstrate how an understanding of someone’s (my) relationship to robots is iteratively developed and shaped by the past, present, and future