Random: Asimov and cyclical history
I'm sure all this has been discussed to death by people far smarter than I, but here I go anyway.
I'm kind of sad that i,Robot was so meh, because all the themes present in Asimov's work could be very interesting. In general I'm a little sad that I doubt to see his work explored much on screen in the future.
Here's -one reason- why.
There's this idea present in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The idea is cyclical history, how patterns arise throughout history and will continue to arise. The question if is those patterns could be studied enough to predict the next step is deeply explored at one point. Which is very interesting to me. Not for some hockey weird thing, but because history is important and interesting. Even now we see parallels to the past, even less apparent ones like... how Americans have elected questionable people as president due to their “hero” or at least famous status. For instance, Ulysses S. Grant is often considered one of the less good Presidents -to put it nicely- but still hailed as a military genius whose election was influenced by his role in the Civil War. There’s the trend of “why do people revolt?”. Usually framed as “they want bread”, but often a much more complex things related not just to lack of necessities but also general poor leadership. Not even good, just weak and ineffectual. The French Revolution happened not just because people were kinda hungry, but King Louis the [fucking whatever teen number he was] was not a good king. I’ve seen it argued that he had less schooling than Elizabeth I, specifically in leading, and she was NEVER supposed to be the monarch. That’s not even bringing up the possible factors of new political ideas emerging as history went on.
Getting a bit less specific here. There is also economics and change, often people do not like when their economy tanks and things start to change -specifically the issue with increased automation over, forever. They freak out, the cling to anything, often tradition OR some new shiny idea. Hoping that clung to thing will make it better? Anyway, cycles are interesting and Asimov explored some cool stuff even if it was kinda long ago.
