[HN Gopher] The Czech Play That Gave Us the Word 'Robot'
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The Czech Play That Gave Us the Word 'Robot'
Author : xiaodai
Score : 88 points
Date : 2021-10-27 11:38 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
| pitspotter2 wrote:
| I'd assumed until recently that early robots and other forms of
| artificial being were friendly and regarded as a good thing in
| early science fiction. Now it seems they were symbols of
| arrogance and guilt right from the start!
|
| The cancelled Catholic intellectual E Michael Jones points out
| that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley may have been afflicted by guilt
| over the suicide of Harriet, Percy Shelley's estranged wife.
| Frankenstein's monster became an object that guilt. Similarly, in
| _Aliens_ , the monsters represent guilt over growing sexual
| licence and abortion, he suggests.
|
| If true this sort of thing may explain why the monsters are
| typically extremely powerful, can break through steel doors, etc.
| One cannot escape from them just as one cannot escape from a
| guilty conscience.
|
| So our ideas about robots may say more about us than about
| robots. It would be a shame if psychological baggage were to
| hamper the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
| It would mean that science fiction has primed us to reject the
| sub-creation of life merely because we project easily onto
| anything that resembles ourselves: even before it has come into
| existence.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There is an old story of a Prague rabbi named Loew, who made a
| golem of clay; an artifical servant of sorts. Needless to say,
| the golem, through an error of the rabbi, escaped his control
| and started behaving violently. Fortunately the rabbi was able
| to incapacitate him (it?).
|
| This story is, I think, 400 years old?
|
| It seems that humans have been distrustful about artificial
| beings since a long time, before they actually could have met
| them.
| greiskul wrote:
| > I'd assumed until recently that early robots and other forms
| of artificial being were friendly and regarded as a good thing
| in early science fiction. Now it seems they were symbols of
| arrogance and guilt right from the start!
|
| I believe Asimov has written that when he started writing his
| robot tales, one of his goals was to have robot stories that
| were not just Frankenstein stories, which he said were
| prevalent at the time.
| pitspotter2 wrote:
| Didn't know that. I enjoyed those stories!
|
| Another favourite is of course Lieutenant Commander Data. His
| goal, rather than to destroy humanity, was to become more
| human himself. This is finally realised when he is presented
| with an 'emotion chip'.
|
| Yet if neuropsychoanalyst Mark Solms is correct it turns out
| that emotions are the foundation of all minds, i.e. Data
| could not have been emotionless to begin with.
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I'd assumed until recently that early robots and other forms
| of artificial being were friendly and regarded as a good thing
|
| See also Metropolis and many other works of art and fiction.
|
| But I don't see one speculative theory about one author of one
| story (from centuries ago) as significant to a serious
| contemporary issue. It provides no evidence of the risks and
| the level of risk, nor an argument about them. Dismissing Mary
| Shelley, even if accepted, tells us nothing about whether AI
| can safely drive a car, make judicial decisions, decide whether
| you get a loan, or drop bombs.
|
| The risk is perceived far beyond that story or older sci-fi,
| but widely anticipated by leading scientists and technologists
| of our day. What about their evidence and arguments? Nor is it
| hard to imagine risks with little thought.
|
| > cancelled
|
| Do we really need to inject reactionary politics into a
| discussion of AI? Does that further the conversation?
| asimpletune wrote:
| Believe it or not I was briefly a Czech major in college.
| Fantastic literature. I never quite understood why the whole
| connection with the word robot was always so strongly emphasized
| though, even then.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I think for small nations, external validation is important,
| and robot took off. So Czechs themselves will be quick to point
| that out among listing their achievements. There is much better
| Czech literature out there.
| blacksqr wrote:
| The excellent book Ariel Like A Harpy, an analysis of the
| Shelleys' Frankenstein and Prometheus Unbound, includes a chapter
| on R.U.R., and draws explicit lines of influence linking them.
| lioeters wrote:
| There are some interesting parallels, or common thread, in Czech
| culture:
|
| - The word "robot" (with its modern meaning) comes from a Czech
| play
|
| - Tradition of Czech animation
|
| - Tradition of puppetry
|
| All these are about "animating" in the classic sense of the word,
| to breathe life into something.
| asimpletune wrote:
| The words dollar and pistol are also Czech I believe.
| schoen wrote:
| "Dollar" is named after a place that is now Czech, but from
| the German name for that place.
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dollar#Etymology
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Also "howitzer" is the English pronunciation of a Czech
| invention, houfnice, from the Hussite wars. They were the
| first to use firearms on a mass scale, arming peasants with
| pistols, long guns, and dragging artillery they designed in
| wagon carts. Was a real shocker to the medieval knights they
| were fighting.
| myth_drannon wrote:
| The Golem of Prague as well.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Golem as "big", as in some Slavic languages?
|
| Just kidding, but Golem might as well be one of the early
| Robot prototypes.
| cleorama wrote:
| In Czech, 'robota' is an archaic word for 'work'. I remember my
| great-grandaunt use it when I was a kid. I think Karel Capek
| credited his brother Josef, poet/painter, for coining the term
| 'robot'.
| mathverse wrote:
| Czechs typically dont use "robota" to mean "work" (they use
| "prace" for that).
|
| Robota is more common in Slovak than in Czech.
| strzibny wrote:
| Depends, I am from a region where we use robota regularly.
| adamnemecek wrote:
| The secondary meaning is corvee.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yeah, one of the reasons why Capek chose the word was to
| express that robots do _menial, undignified_ work.
| marton78 wrote:
| It's still in use as the regular word for work in East Slavic
| languages
| yetihehe wrote:
| In Polish, 'robota' is casual word for 'work' and is used in
| normal conversations.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| In Ostravian dialect of Czech it survives as well.
|
| "Kaj ides?" - "Do roboty." (standard Czech would be "Kam
| jdes?" - "Do prace.")
| resheku wrote:
| "Ostravian dialect" is that what you call Silesian language
| in Czechia?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Yes and no. Ostrava, as a huge industrial center, had an
| unique mix of ethnicities (Czech, German, Jewish, Slovak,
| Galician, Silesian, Polish etc.) that interacted and
| created a mixed language. As a result, the dialect is
| different from the one used in the Silesian countryside.
| There is a lot of very specific words that probably
| weren't used in the original agricultural setting of
| Silesia (such as "papalas", meaning a high-ranking
| official).
|
| And reading collections of old Silesian folklore from the
| villages, I noticed the rustic language having some extra
| features no longer present in Ostrava as well.
|
| But the staccato accent is pretty much the same, yes. As
| is the preserved pronunciation of hard "y" which died out
| in standard Czech some 600 years ago.
| bialpio wrote:
| To me it has negative connotations. I'd be way more likely to
| use the word "robota" (as opposed to just "praca") when I'm
| not too happy about what is involved.
| danielam wrote:
| It better translates as "labor" as in "manual labor", or as
| "toil".
| rpmisms wrote:
| I actually read the play, it's very good. A "robot" is a
| simplified human, assembled in a factory, with no reproductive
| capability. There was an implied aspect of sex slavery, as well.
| By the end, a pseudo Adam and Eve have emerged.
| pjbeam wrote:
| It doesn't take long to read and you can find it online or get
| it for a couple bucks. Agree with above comment--worth a couple
| hours read.
| Hoasi wrote:
| Karel Capek is a great science fiction and satirical writer. I'd
| recommend _War with the Newts_ , also translated as _Salamander
| Wars_.
| thesz wrote:
| I have fond memories of his short stories and wonderful kind
| fairy tales. I used to read them as a child, some I remember
| almost word for word being 50 now.
| capekwasright wrote:
| R.U.R is a fantastic work that unfortunately has been perpetually
| shrouded in obscurity, despite its outsized popular influence. I
| highly recommend reading it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| (2019)
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Previous discussion from 2 years ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20789755
|
| And a related discussion from a year ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25916140
| poopacabra wrote:
| Apparently Gene Roddenberry was inspired to create Star Trek by
| the Czech sci-fi film Ikarie X-B1. The resemblance is there. Also
| there is a Czech sci-Fi film with the first known selfie stick.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| https://translate.google.com/?sl=en&tl=ru&text=work&op=trans...
|
| https://translate.google.com/?sl=pl&tl=en&text=robotnik&op=t...
| theSIRius wrote:
| Yes, Slavic languages have similarities. The same could be said
| for Germanic languages like English and German or Latin
| languages like Spanish and Portuguese.
|
| That doesn't change the fact that the word "robot" in the
| meaning of artificial human was first used in R.U.R.
| blacksqr wrote:
| The word 'robota' is also related to the German word
| 'arbeiter'; both suggesting 'laborer' at the most basic
| level, and sometimes used as a euphemism for outright slave.
|
| Thus the ironic power of the word's use in the play, the same
| irony that powers the motto 'Arbeit Macht Frei'.
| dejv wrote:
| Robota was involuntary work for feudal lord during middle
| ages. The class of people required to do such work were
| called robotnik (in singular).
| danielam wrote:
| "Robotnik" is still used in Polish to mean someone who
| does manual labor and the like. The pejorative "robol"
| translates as "prole" as in "proletarian".
| dejv wrote:
| When Capek created word robot using robotnik as a base,
| the term was not used for close to 200 years. Czech
| translation of robotnik in Polish would be delnik.
| BerislavLopac wrote:
| My favourite detail about that story is the name of the inventor
| - I'm pretty sure that the robots are controlled by Python. ;)
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