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I mean, yeah, duh, the word "robot"... > The word robot comes from the word robota. The word robota means literally "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "d

I mean, yeah, duh, the word "robot"... > The word robot comes from the word robota. The word robota means literally "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Capek#Etymology_of_robot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Capek#Etymology_of_robot > R.U.R. is a 1920 science-fiction play by the Czech writer Karel Čapek. "R.U.R." stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._(Rossum%27s_Universal_Robots) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R._(Rossum%27s_Universal_R... So a century, at least. This time it's not sci-fi.

zvolsky 3y ago
Quoting my comment from another thread: > ... this whole debate is reminiscent of Karel Čapek's War with the Newts [1936]. In particular the public discourse from a time before the newts took over. "It would certainly be an overstatement to say that nobody at that time ever spoke or wrote about anything but the talking newts. People also talked and wrote about other things such as the next war, the economic crisis, football, vitamins and fashion; but there was a lot written about the newts, and much of it was very ill-informed. This is why the outstanding scientist, Professor Vladimir Uher (University of Brno), wrote an article for the newspaper in which he pointed out that the putative ability of Andrias Scheuchzer to speak, which was really no more than the ability to repeat spoken words like a parrot, ..." Note the irony of the professor's attempt to improve an ill-informed debate by contributing his own piece of misinformation, equating newt speech to mere parrot-like mimicry. > http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601981h.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601981h.html
thangalin 3y ago
> So a century, at least. The idea of automated mechanization goes much, much further back, at least as far as Proto-Indo-European language (ca. 4500 - 4000 BC), predating even the Greek story of Talos. See: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1n%CC%A5g%CA%B7nis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1n%CC%A5g%CA%B7nis * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talos I researched this for a scene in my novel. (Alpha readers wanted, see profile for details.) If you trace the etymology of Hephaestus, the creator of Talos, you eventually end up at h1n̥gʷnis, if I recall correctly.

zvolsky 3y ago

Quoting my comment from another thread: > ... this whole debate is reminiscent of Karel Čapek's War with the Newts [1936]. In particular the public discourse from a time before the newts took over. "It would certainly be an overstatement to say that nobody at that time ever spoke or wrote about anything but the talking newts. People also talked and wrote about other things such as the next war, the economic crisis, football, vitamins and fashion; but there was a lot written about the newts, and much of it was very ill-informed. This is why the outstanding scientist, Professor Vladimir Uher (University of Brno), wrote an article for the newspaper in which he pointed out that the putative ability of Andrias Scheuchzer to speak, which was really no more than the ability to repeat spoken words like a parrot, ..." Note the irony of the professor's attempt to improve an ill-informed debate by contributing his own piece of misinformation, equating newt speech to mere parrot-like mimicry. > http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601981h.html http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601981h.html

thangalin 3y ago

> So a century, at least. The idea of automated mechanization goes much, much further back, at least as far as Proto-Indo-European language (ca. 4500 - 4000 BC), predating even the Greek story of Talos. See: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1n%CC%A5g%CA%B7nis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H1n%CC%A5g%CA%B7nis * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talos I researched this for a scene in my novel. (Alpha readers wanted, see profile for details.) If you trace the etymology of Hephaestus, the creator of Talos, you eventually end up at h1n̥gʷnis, if I recall correctly.