Drawing on the work of Hubert Dreyfus, Philip Agre, Daniel Dennett and other thinkers, this presentation considers some of the assumptions, or presumptions, which undergird some of the discourses in the field of social robotics, and questions of ethics with respect to technology. References and examples are drawn from popular culture and the history of technology. Observations are made regarding some continuities throughout the history of Artificial Intelligence. Questions of sociality and social commitment are explored from the perspective of embodied, enactive and situated cognition. The network perspective is considered, in terms of the place of robots within an extended technological network and within an ‘actor network’ including humans, and other actors.