Origin of the word robot?
A dystopian play from 1920 provides one of the key words of the modern world.
The word robota is perhaps the most important export from the Czech language. Other Czech loanwords often have a military theme (semtex, howitzer, pistol) and though bohemian has a universality this come from French rather than a direct transcription of the place name.
Definition
Robot first came to public attention through Czech writer Karel Čapek in his science fiction play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), published in 1920. This opens in a factory that in a factory that makes artificial workers from synthetic organic matter.
Čapek’s robots are not mechanical devices, but rather artificial biological organisms that may be mistaken for humans. In current parlance they would be termed androids and their capacity to deceive is initially the source of comic confusion:
HELENA: (sits) Where are you from?
SULLA: From here, the factory.
HELENA: Oh, you were born here.
SULLA: Yes I was made here.
HELENA: (startled) What?
DOMIN: (laughing) Sulla isn’t a person, Miss Glory, she’s a robot.
HELENA: Oh, please forgive me…
To describe his creation, Karel Čapek had originally used another neologism labori based on the Latin word for work, labor, but was dissatisfied. His brother then pointed to the Czech word robota, which carries the suggestion of surf labour or slave.
Karel also wrote to the Oxford English Dictionary to correct their etymology and to request that his brother be credited as the source of robot — then loosely defined in English to mean ‘to work slavishly’.
The adverb robotically adds a new dimension — the idea of a stiff, unnatural, repetitive action, OED’s earliest evidence for robotically is from 1924, in the Chicago Tribune.
Brave new world
R.U.R was partially a response to the chaos of World War I, particularly with regard to what now constitutes the Czech Republic. About 1.4 million Czech soldiers fought in World War I, 150,000 of which died. Czech nationalists formed legions in Russia, France and Italy, where they fought against the Central Powers and later with White Russian forces against Bolshevik troops. An independent democratic state was posited as an alternative to foreign domination and autocracy.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was another influence — with Čapek exploring ethical issues surrounding individual autonomy and the danger inherent in the state ‘playing God’. In the play the robots eventually rebel with catastrophic results.
Legacy
Čapek’s prophetic metaphor about the use of technology to expand state control would later be explored by Huxley and Orwell. The broader dystopian implications of ever improving robotics would also prove an enduring theme in the emerging genre of science fiction. Asimov has the first citation in the OED:
Austin Wilde, Robotical Engineer, turned to Sam Tobe ….
I. Asimov in Amazing Stories
Later the threat of robots superseding their human creators was central to Phillip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) which in turn lead to the blockbuster film Blade Runner. J.G. Ballard also played with the unsettling implications of accelerating technological developments. Such concerns entered the mainstream with Michael Crichton’s film ‘Westworld’ (1973), which later inspired a television series and many imitators.
Yet our notions about robots continue to be fanciful. Despite remarkable progress, even the most sophisticated robots are still comparatively clumsy, ineffective machines. More recently there has been heated discussion as to the potential dangers posed by AI.
