Robot Power
The past several weeks Paleo-Future has shared great posts about robots, which I’ve looked at in The “savage” robot in 1937 and Decoding Al Capp’s Robot, Continued. The brief timeline of pre-Asimov robot history I created began with Capek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots - which is featured in the most recent Paleo-Future post, a 1922 review of the play. I’m not sure where Matt digs up these primary sources, but they’re great. Check it out for a scan of the original article.
I should probably add the 1934 Fresno Bee article “Giant Robots, controlled by wireless, to fight our battles” to my timeline, a reoccurring idea during this early period of robot history. Matt highlights the following quote from the R.U.R. review:
After they are assembled he can be sold in wholesale lots to various industrial concerns and to nations as soldiers against the Robot armies of other nations
Beyond fantasies of robots fighting wars for us, what seems to be at play are issues of power. There was the fear of robots obtaining too much power. There was also the desire to control and enslave robots. Tracing the roots of R.U.R. back to Frankenstein, there’s certainly a strong message regarding power and the desire to control. Most importantly, these visions of the future didn’t have to be plausible - they served a purpose within the culture of the time. The question remains, what was the purpose of the robot within our culture at that time?
Posted in Newspapers, Paleo-Future, Robots
I'm a digital humanist and graduate of American Studies, currently working as a web developer and