The Modern "Robot"
The first use of the word Robot was in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) written in 1920 and first performed in Czechoslovakia in 1921, in New York in 1922 and an English edition published in 1923. Artificial living beings are created from a chemical substitute for protoplasm but over time they learn about violence from their human creators and begin to revolt. The play ends on an optimistic, even spiritual, note as the artificial biology leads a male and female robot to fall in love and inherit the earth.
While Karel Čapek's play introduced the word "robot" into languages around the globe but he later wrote a letter to the Oxford English Dictionary of etymology in which he named his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek, as its true inventor. In an article in the Czech Lidové noviny in 1933 he also explains that he originally wanted to call the creatures "laboři" from the Latin word labor. Karel found the word too bookish and sought advice from Josef who suggested to call them "robots". The word, which is always capitalized in Čapek's play, derives from robota which means "drudgery" in Czech and means "work" in Slovak.)
The theme of robots has been picked up by science fiction writers and many volumes are focused on robots and their interaction with the human species. Of particular note is the work of Isaac Asimov as a large part of his work centers on robots. Asimov is particularly known for his creation of the Three laws of robotics which he uses in his stories as both to define his robots and how these interact within the worlds he creates.
Read more about this topic: Robots In Literature
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or robot:
“Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“Let’s start with the three fundamental Rules of Robotics.... We have: one, a robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Two, a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. And three, a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)