I Robot “Little Lost Robot”

People say a lot of things. We say things we mean and things we don't mean. In some cases we can't tell whether or not what others say is what they really mean. Then people start to make assumptions off of false information which make things hectic for both people. That is the dilemma in the short story “Little Lost Robot” from the book I Robot.

When people communicate with one another there are often misunderstandings and confusion occurs inside the group. I often misunderstand things when people are talking to me. Most of the time when humans communicate when something does not make sense to them they try to make sense of it by themselves because they have the ability to do so. Robots however do not have that capability, they must take everything literally.

Not only do people just not hear the conversation properly, they also get confused by the many meanings of words. Since words often have many meanings people hear one thing when others mean something completely different. The short story “Little Lost Robot” is and excellent example of this confusion. Almost everyone in their life at some point misunderstands someone because they are thinking of the other meaning of a word. That is how I and many others make most of our mistakes.

Although we communicate most every day, we often misunderstand a lot of them due to the many meanings of words or just the mishearing the conversation. Should everyone just think things over before they say it, including myself, or if people would pay more attention to body language, which is a very important part of communication, there may be a lot less misunderstandings in our everyday conversations.