The word Robots comes from robota, a Czech term for demeaning labor.

The source is a play written immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution, dramatizing a coldly efficient approach to an industrial workforce.

Domin, the director of the world’s largest robot company, explains to Helena that the trouble with the human worker is that he “feels joy, plays the violin, wants to go for a walk, in general requires a lot of things that—that are, in effect, superfluous.”

Helena’s chief concern is the welfare of robots. She is shocked when Domin refers to “Robot Palsy.” This is a “flaw in production” that causes the more advanced machines to stop working and start breaking things.

Domin’s solution to this dysfunction is to send the offending units to “the stamping mill.” Sensing correctly that this palsy is actually a form of rebellion, Helena objects, “No, no, that’s a soul!”

What are robots?

In an interview the author, Karel Čapek, explained his concept:

“The old inventor, Mr. Rossum (whose name translated into English signifies “Mr. Intellectual” or “Mr. Brain”), is a typical representative of the scientific materialism of the last [nineteenth] century. His desire to create an artificial man — in the chemical and biological, not mechanical sense — is inspired by a foolish and obstinate wish to prove God to be unnecessary and absurd. Young Rossum is the modern scientist, untroubled by metaphysical ideas; scientific experiment is to him the road to industrial production. He is not concerned to prove, but to manufacture.”

Are we there yet? Is it time to start the stamping mills?

The End?