Any Media Depicting a Robot Society?

There's the movie Robots, for a start. Asimov's stuff tends to deal with the robots in society and the Three Rules. The video game Alita possibly. Probably a lot more.

 

There might be something in nano-structures. There are two schools of thought: first is a Yang, absolutely place everything type of approach. The other is to allow the mechanism to develop on its own.

As for "what does it want", read up on "The Selfish Gene" (an older book). Mother Nature is usually about algorithms. This little robot wants sunlight, this other robot wants sunlight as well. Competition. You can observe this behavior in plants.

There is also the idea of humans needing to use mechanics to survive. Their own organic ability does not allow them to survive/compete in the particular environment, so they merged. Maybe the atmosphere has high levels of radiation or something. Just so quick thoughts. Best! ABR