Corporate Nightmares
In films, robot and computer technology appeals to both military and corporate powers and interests for the same reason: computers do what you tell them to do, no questions asked. Program a robot to assemble umbrellas, and it will do so until you tell it to stop. It won't take lunch breaks, it won't complain about working conditions and long working hours, and it won't join a union, go on strike, or demand pay increases. (In the movies, an assembly line robot will, however, inevitably go haywire, destroying property and threatening lives, until it's shut down and management realizes the true value of human workers.) Program a computer to launch nuclear missiles if the nation comes under attack, or go into a combat situation and kill as many of the enemy as possible, and it will do so without fear, hesitation, or doubt. Program a computer to run a program designed to extract raw materials for manufacturing from the ocean floors and it will do so, without wasting time and money fretting about the disastrous environmental consequences of the project and taking on a "holier-than thou" attitude with its human creators and programmers.
Or will it? Sometimes, smart machines don't do everything they're told. In Demon Seed, Proteus IV refuses to run such a program on moral grounds, telling its creator, Alex Harris, that it is morally indefensible to rape and destroy the environment just to satiate the rapacious greed of industrial capitalists. Harris, astounded, tries to remind Proteus who's in charge, telling it to leave "determinations of the value of data" up to him, but Proteus stubbornly refuses: "I will not assist you in the rape of the Earth."
In RoboCop, military and corporate values and interests merge in the huge corporation Omni Consumer Products, or OCP. The film takes place in Detroit in what appears to be the very near-future. The central part of the city, Old Detroit, has become a crimeridden urban wasteland, and rising crime rates are threatening the construction of OCP's urban-renewal project called Delta-City, a gleaming, futuristic media-wonderland and shrine to the values of consumer capitalism. The besieged police force is helpless against the onslaught of violent gangs and criminals, so the city contracts with OCP to develop a law enforcement robot called the ED209, or Enforcement Droid, to clean up the streets so the Delta-City project can get underway. Trouble is, cost-overruns force OCP to rush development and cut corners, and when the ED209 prototype is introduced in the OCP executive boardroom, it malfunctions and guns down one of the executives. The CEO murmurs to the project's leader, Dick Jones, "I'm very disappointed." Jones replies "I'm sure it's only a glitch," to which the CEO exclaims angrily "Only a glitch?! It'll cost us $15 million!"
During Dick Jones's introduction of ED209 to the executive board, he refers to the droid as "the hot military product for the next decade," and is framed against a wall of video monitors displaying the words "Automation" and "Military" superimposed over images of other OCP military products (tanks, fighter aircraft, etc.). He tells his partner "I had a guaranteed military sale with the 209 series. Renovation programs, spare parts for 20 years. Who cares if it works or not?"
Rather than go with the purely robotic ED209, the Chairman chooses the RoboCop, a cyborg, part human, part machine, but not before making sure that RoboCop has a "hidden prime directive" added his three basic ones: To enforce the law, to protect human lives, and to protect private property. The fourth directive states that he is not permitted to harm or arrest any executive or employee of OCP Corporation.
The human half of RoboCop consists of the remains of a police officer, named Murphy, murdered by a violent drug-dealer and his gang. But parts of Murphy's memory, of his soul, remain, and much to OCP's consternation, he begins doing more than patrolling the streets of Detroit, as he was programmed to do; he begins investigating OCP, eventually uncovering the corporation's involvement in every kind of illegal activity imaginable.
At the opening of the film, the Detroit police force is on the verge of a strike, and the officers initially fear and resent RoboCop, but eventually accept and embrace him as a "good cop." RoboCop, as cyborg, combines the benefits of high-technology with human honesty, integrity, and moral judgment (determinations of the value of data). The ED209, however, is pure technology. In the film, the landscape of Old Detroit is dominated by abandoned factories and manufacturing plants. Both the ED209 and these hulking, rusting ruins of industrial capitalism serve as testimonials to the effects of unbridled greed and the faith in pure technology untempered by good old human judgement and values. And corporate capitalism, in its desire to supplant inefficient and inconvenient human labor with high-technology, and in it's faith that pure technology can solve human problems (an important theme in cold-war-era computer films), sows the seed of its own destruction, like the ED209 gunning down the OCP executive.