Robot: Making A Mechanical Mind
In 1920, a Czech writer was stumped. He\u2019d written a play about a future where machines that looked like people do our bidding. They were the perfect workers: obedient, hard working, and never demanded a pay raise. But what was the writer to call these marvelous machines? There wasn\u2019t yet a word for this type of creation.\xa0\nHe had initially chosen labori, from the Latin for labor, but something about the word wasn\u2019t quite right. It seemed...stiff, bookish. This play wasn\u2019t just about machines who labored. It was about machines we exploited, relentlessly. And eventually, the writer landed on a word that fit better: Robot.\xa0\nRobot comes from an old Czech word for drudgery and servitude. Though in his play - like so very many robo-dystopias to come - the writer showed that a mind we create to serve us, isn\u2019t necessarily a mind we can control.\nFootnotes & Further Reading:\xa0\nSee more drawings and diagrams in\xa0The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices by Ismail al-Jazari.\nCheck out some old footage of Unimate, the first worker robot.\nCredits:\nThis episode was produced by Johanna Mayer, Julia Pistell, and Elah Feder. Elah is our editor and senior producer. We had sound design and mastering from Chris Wood. Our music was composed by Daniel Peterschmidt. Thank you to Craig Cravens, senior lecturer at Indiana University, for helping us with research about Karel Capek. We had fact checking help from Danya AbdelHameid. Nadja Oertelt is our chief content officer.\xa0\n\nThis season of Science Diction is supported by Audible.