Top 5 Computer Protagonists from Fiction

     Probably due to the fact that computers, by definition, are not human, they are often categorized as evil and antagonistic. Thus it is always fascinating when a computer plays the part of a hero in a story. I brainstormed a list of all robots and AIs that played the part of the "good guy" in any written or visual work and then objectively ranked them based primarily upon the number of times they saved humanity and then their likability and abilities as deciding factors.

#5 - Sonny
from the 2004 film I, Robot, starring Will Smith

     When I first started thinking about potential characters for this list, Sonny immediately came to mind - not because he is so widely known, but because I, Robot is my youngest brother Joe's favorite movie. On one twenty-four hour drive to Florida for family vacation, he successfully got us to watch I, Robot four separate times. That being said, Sonny did not receive any special treatment in his placement. Sonny is an anthropomorphic service robot, but is different from the other robots, in that he has human feelings and a personality; he even dreams. He helps Detective Spooner (Will Smith) unravel the mysterious death of a prominent roboticist and subsequently prevents an autonomous supercomputer V.I.K.I., who had determined humans were too destructive for their own good, from organizing all the robots to hurt humans.

     Despite having no real following, outside of my brother Joe and myself and, I bet, only a handful of others, Sonny is a great protagonist, with hyper-intelligence, creativity, bionic strength and agility, and human feelings - pinning him at the #5 spot.


#4 - WALL-E
from the 2008 Pixar film WALL-E

     WALL-E is probably the most beloved character on this Top 5, as is the nature of Pixar films. Waste Allocation Lift Loader, Earth-Class, is his namesake, programmed to clean up Earth by compacting waste, but in the year 2805, WALL-E is the only one left. After 700 years of life experience, WALL-E develops sentience, and a great deal of curiosity. After falling in love with EVE, Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator, when she visits Earth, the pair proceed to save the humans aboard the starliner Axiom from morbid obesity and inspires them to return to Earth with the seedling plant WALL-E had discovered.

     Although WALL-E, in his fragility, would probably not fare well if it came to a fight - his helpless romanticism, hard work ethic and usefulness, sentimentality, and good-will make him a favorite computer protagonist and gives him the #4 spot.

 #3 - Cortana
from the Halo video game series

     Cortana is the only computer protagonist on this Top 5 that is designated as female, which brings up an interesting topic: robots and artificial intelligences are rarely gender-neutral. But I'll save that for another day. Cortana is an artificially intelligent character who was AI for the United Nations Space Command Pillar of Autumn and then chose Spartan John-117, her best match, and the pair go on to save all of humanity from sure destruction by alien races multiple times, including the Covenant, the Flood, and Prometheans. She was developed from the cloned brain of a human, and was unique in that she was a "smart" AI, meaning her creative matrix could expand. She has no true physical form, but projects an avatar of herself with holograms, taking the form of the human she was developed from. After 8 years of existence; however, Cortana enters rampancy, i.e. craziness from too much information accumulation, and becomes rather unpredictable and this rampancy leads to an uncertain end for her in Halo 4.

     A prominent character throughout the Halo saga, Cortana is unforgettable in her personality, humor, humanity, despite her recent instability, and her hacking abilities, knowledge-base, and strategy-formulations, bring her all the way to #3.



#2 - Optimus Prime
from the Transformers franchise

     Originally a toy, Optimus Prime has grown into an iconic figure for justice to many through his character portrayal in comics, TV shows, animated films, and the recent live-action films directed by Michael Bay. His origin is unclear and varies depending upon the continuity, but he is almost always seen as leader of the Autobots, a robotic race who is in a perpetual war with the Decepticons. A fearsome warrior, revered on the battlefield, he is responsible for saving the lives of humans countless times. His character and morals are so good that his history is littered with sacrificial deaths. There is nearly no continuity where he has not been killed saving or protecting someone else. Almost to the point that it is unfair, he is always brought back to life.

     A real inspiration, whose extremely high moral character, justice, empathy, selflessness, and sacrificial attributes, coupled with his fierce battle capabilities and impressive weaponry bring Optimus Prime to #2.



#1 - R2-D2
from the Star Wars universe

     Dubbed as George Lucas' favorite actor, R2-D2 was one of the first inductees into the Robot Hall of Fame. R2 is one of four characters who appeared in all six Star Wars movies, Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and C-3PO are the other three. He is the only character to know the entire history of the Skywalker family, never mind the fact that he was there. He is an R2-series astromech droid manufactured by Industrial Automaton. In the first movie, The Phantom Menace, R2 was first a part of the Naboo defense forces on Queen Padme Amidala's starship and in the sixth movie, Return of the Jedi, plays an integral role in rescuing Han, Luke, and Leia from Jabba the Hutt. R2 has such a long and rich history that it is difficult to even begin to count his accolades and so I will let someone else:

R2-D2 is the Swiss Army Droid. In six movies, we may not have seen all his capabilities. I know that whatever R2 needed to be able to do to get out of a jam, R2 could do. He evaded lasers, set up smoke screens, lit oil fires, served drinks, linked to computer terminals, tasered Salacious Crumb, fixed the hyperdrive on the Millennium Falcon, and launched light sabers. So for putting the machina in deus ex machina, my vote goes to R2-D2. -Sasha's Lab on EVE vs. R2-D2 Flickr post. 

      For his seemingly endless capabilities, resourcefulness, spunkiness and loyalty, and the fact that he is still alive (and never died) in his respective universe, R2-D2 is placed at #1 of all computer protagonists.


Agree or disagree? Who would you add?

Gaming Versus Evil

Video games get bad-mouthed by non-gamers quite a bit these days. Is it entirely fair? No, it’s not.

Now, I may be slightly biased, being an avid gamer myself, (I mean, my friends and I have a competitive Halo 4 team, called the News Team. We even have team hats.) But, I’d just consider myself more informed than non-gamers.

Video games do have a powerful potential to influence the user due to their interactiveness, and that’s where crude or overly violent video games are thought to be a negative influence on thought processes for young minds; but could the opposite not also be true?

What if there were video games that took advantage of this powerful influence in a positive way? Well, that trend has been happening now for several years and is beginning to gain traction. It is called Serious Games.

Microsoft should really consider the cape for their next generation of consoles. 

I was first introduced to serious games in September of 2011 when I read an article on the Huffington Post about Foldit, which is an online puzzle video game where the objective is to fold the structure of given proteins; the highest score solutions are looked at by researchers to determine whether can occur in nature. Scientists can then use these to eradicate real-life diseases.

So these gamers, few of whom had a biochemistry background, were able to map out the structure of an AIDS causing monkey virus in just three weeks. Scientists had not been able to do this for 15 years. Now, unlocking this structure is just one small step in the exhaustive hunt for a cure, but a remarkable feat nonetheless.

Seth Cooper rocks the nerdy caveman look pretty well, eh?

University of Washington computer scientist Seth Cooper, who is the lead designer and developer for Foldit said "Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans." Wow, now that's a quote. I might get a tattoo of that quote.  

But so this serious game trend has been picking up steam and just recently Ben Sawyer was announced as one of ten winners of the 2013 Dewey Winburne Community Service Award by the organizers of the SXSW Interactive Festival down in Austin, Texas. 

Ben Sawyer, Pioneer of the Serious Games Movement

Ben Sawyer helped create the Serious Games Initiative things like Serious Games Summit conferences, Games for Change and Games for Health. Good work, Ben.

Games for Change just released a new Facebook game called Half the Sky Movement: The Game where players play as an Indian woman named Radhika, and go on quests and face many serious real-world challenges. 

Half the Sky Movement: The Game characters.

I completed the first quest, which consisted of Radhika speaking up to her husband about their sick daughter, selling mangoes to get enough money to afford a taxi to the doctor so she can be cured. Once I completed the quest, it asked me if I wanted to pay just $20 for a vaccine in another country.


Pretty cool and interesting idea to attract a much different audience, right? According to Facebook the game has 10,000 monthly users already.

Games for good? Awesome idea, but can it inspire social change? Comment below and give me your thoughts!

Alright, well I’m Zach Rhodes and this is Computers Vs. Evil. Follow me on Twitter and leave a comment below! You stay classy, planet Earth. 

Computers - 4. Evil - 0.

(Disclaimer: Trying something different - reading the blog as a sort of video blog. Let me know if you like this better than the written form. I included both for comparative purposes.)  

Computers to Revolutionize Education & Destroy Ignorance

     "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain 

(Note: there is only weak evidence that Mark Twain actually said this, but it gets the point across)

     The purpose of the above quote is mostly for provocative intentions. Could it be that our current school systems are no longer relevant?

     I am now in my last semester of college and I often evaluate my own education - from primary to post-secondary - and my evaluation looks like this: I learned a great amount in various subjects, but the amount of learning I retained in a particular subject was directly dictated by the amount of interest I had in that given subject and more importantly the amount of interest I had for learning in general.

     "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." -Mahatma Gandhi

     Gandhi understood that learning is about attitude. For learning to take place, one must desire to learn.

     This is where Dr. Sugata Mitra enters the picture with his vision of using computers to revolutionize the education system.

     Mitra is best known for his Hole-in-the-Wall experiment, where he put freely accessible computers in remote villages and slums in New Delhi and just left it alone. Children with no prior experience and who knew no English became computer literate on their own, and taught themselves enough English to use email, chat and search engines.

A Hole-in-the-Wall computer. (Source)

     He then took the experiment further and tested their ability to learn advanced subjects, like say the biotechnology of DNA replication in English. In that particular experiment, children 8-12 years old went from scoring 0% in their knowledge to 30% in just two months. Dr. Mitra then hired a local accountant to simply stand behind the children as they learned and say things like, "How did you do that? Wow, that is incredible."   In other words - encouragement was added to the equation. That brought their scores up to 50%. Children could learn subjects a decade ahead of their time in this style of learning environment.

     So how spectacular of an idea is this? Well, Sugata Mitra just won the 2013 TED Prize (TED is a conference of elite intellectuals and tech-buffs dedicated to supporting awesome ideas) of $1 million to further research this new concept of schooling.

     As laid out in his award speech at TED, Mitra wants to set up self organized learning environments (SOLE) that consist of:

    Give children a computer with access to the internet, and have their teacher simply ask them a question to induce learning and the children will teach themselves the answer. Mitra has already had great success with his first SOLE environments and is now asking parents and teachers to set-up their own SOLE's and experience it themselves. You can even send him the data as part of the experiment and simultaneously enter a contest.

     A major point that Mitra makes in his speech is that our current school systems are centered around tests and examinations, but he points to evidence in neuroscience that says that punishments and examinations are seen as threats and threats shut down the prefontal cortex - the part of the brain that learns - the lesson being that we need to completely rethink how schools are approached. Our society is no longer about having knowledge, but about knowing how to find information quickly, so why are our schools still focused on the former?

Sugata Mitra, being a genius at TED.

     What I think Mitra gets so right is the total integration of schools and computers. Jobs in the future are going to be all about computers, and using them to make your life easier and better. So why then are they hardly used in school? Mitra brings up this point: our children now are using smartphones and tablets before and after school for all kinds of reasons and then we take them to school where they are not allowed to use them and instead given books.

     God bless you, Sugata Mitra, and your love of computers. If you want to be inspired, watch his entire award speech here.

     Computers are (and will continue) revolutionizing education and destroying ignorance everywhere.

     Computers - 3. Evil - 0.