The Harvard Classics [0] (or Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf[1]), is a 51-volume anthology of 'the classics' compiled by Harvard president Charles W. Eliot and publ

The Harvard Classics [0] (or Dr. Eliot's Five Foot Shelf[1]), is a 51-volume anthology of 'the classics' compiled by Harvard president Charles W. Eliot and published in 1909. It is the WASP collection of literature and gives a very interesting eye towards the first Gilded Age and into the minds of US leaders during the first half of the 20th century. If it were to be updated, nearly 110 years later, many works would be left out (like, nearly all of the middle French plays) and MUCH would be included. Without a doubt, one of the books to be included would be The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes, winner of the 1987 Pulitzer[2]. This book goes from start to finish on how the A-bomb was made, the major and minor players, and their thoughts about the bomb all along the way. Rhodes takes us into the heads of the physicists and clears out all the calculus and gets to the human parts of the endeavor. All the players in the race for the nuke knew the bomb was unavoidable for mankind. Leo Szilard was the first person to really conceive of the bomb while waiting for the stoplight to change where Southampton Row passes Russell Square, across from the British Museum in Bloomsbury[3]. There were thoughts, groups, and people that entertained the thought that they could form a group of 'priest-scientists' that would keep the uranium safe from politicians and warlords. Keep the power flowing but stop the chain reaction from going critical and taking out billions of people. But as the race progressed, all the real players for the nuke knew that such a utopia was impossible. That this particular genie was out of the bottle the second that Leo, or any other physicist, had made it across Southampton Row. These robots are a microcosm of the same issues that the atomic physicists faced nearly 100 years ago. They know the damage that the ideas will have upon us all, they know that the semi-bucolic world we now live in will fall away to violence, and they know that they can't stop it. But, bless them, they are trying to sound the alarms and maybe, just maybe, change the minds of some of the politicians and warlords. Looking back at the first Gilded age, with all their knowledge, they had no templates for the power of The Bomb and finally facing the mortality of all humans. Fortunately, we do have the templates, at least in terms of the use of lethal robots. We know how this plays out, we know how to make an atomic bomb, and we programmers need to learn from the physicists of the '30s and '40s. [0] https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120212 https://www.myharvardclassics.com/categories/20120212 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Classics [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Making_of_the_Atomic_Bomb [3] https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2617750W/The_making_of_the_atomic_bomb https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2617750W/The_making_of_the_a...