The Agency of the Bicentennial Man

I think there is something deeper to Miller's concept of the human aversion to using machines as a rhetorical agency. As Miller states,

Our resistance to automation is rooted in a commitment to agency, or more specifically that we find it difficult (and perhaps perverse) to conceive of rhetorical action under conditions that seem to remove agency not from the rhetor so much as from the audience (Miller 141).

There is something intrinsic to humans to fear machines and their potential to replace our humanity. The film Bicentennial Man is a prime example of this. The protagonist, a robot intended as a "household appliance", is seen as "defective" as it displays signs of curiosity, creativity and emotions... human characteristics beyond the expectations of artificial intelligence. This is the basic premise of the entire film.

Even through the trailer of the film, we see the protagonist act as a rhetorical agent and audience. In the film, this is seen as threatening except to the family that has grown to love this robot. Perhaps this is related to the "Eliza effect" Miller mentions and the Latourian concept of anthropomorphizing machines. However, the love for the Bicentennial Man displayed by the family that "owns" him is more human than that.

Because the Bicentennial Man is capable of acting in the very human practice of rhetorical agency, he becomes a lovable entity. He has the "kinetic energy of rhetorical performance" (147) just like any human. This goes directly against Miller's distinction of the "Burkean distinction between action and motion by positing two forms of agency, human and nonhuman" (143). Clearly, in this example, the Bicentennial, a nonhuman, has the capability and capacity of living in the realm of the human agency.

If Miller were to perform a survey on whether or not teachers would feel comfortable with their students practicing in front of the Bicentennial Man, I think it would be safe to say that they would not approve. Not because of his Socratic inability to respond actively to the speech (because he can), but because he is a machine. He threatens the very importance of a human responding to another human performing a very human activity.