On January 25th, 1921, Karel Capek brought a new word onto the stage that is having a profound impact on the 21st century – robot.
Derived from the Czech word robota which means slave labour or drudgery and comes from the old Slav word orbota which means “hard plowing work for the King” robot is a word that has struck fear into both science fiction fans and workers over the 100 years since its birth.
A famous Czech writer and playwright Capek, was indebted to his brother artist Josef who had suggested the term robot rather than the Latin term ‘Labore’ which he had been toying with instead.
The result was Rossums’ Universal Robots (RUR), published by Aventinum in November 2020 and performed for the first time at Prague’s National Theatre. The play quickly caught the theatre world’s imagination by October 1922, it was being premiered at the Garrick Theatre in New York City in October 1922, where it ran for 184 performances, a production in which Spencer Tracy and Pat O’Brien played robots in their Broadway debuts. By April 1923 it had made it to the St Martin’s Theatre in London in an abridged version.
The success of Kapek’s idea is undisputed and it is now exciting the greatest debate of our age: how will we work with these new creations and exactly what form will they take? And will we end up as the robots masters or their slaves a subject previous PassW0rd shows have examined in depth? A dire scenario that Kapek paints in RUR where in the end neither the robots or humanity win.
To find out more listen to the January edition of PassW0rd, ‘The robot century’ , broadcast on January 13 on ResonanceFM on MixCloud which explores the future role of robots and AI and whether it will be possible for us to work with them and what form that relationship will take.
To buy a copy of the play go to http://catbirdpress.com/
Click on the programme title to listen to PassW0rd’s ‘The robots century or go to the WiFi logo on the bottom right.
Or to listen to an early American performance by LibreVox click here https://archive.org/details/rossums_universal_robots_1409_librivox
To listen to PassW0rd’s in-depth investigations into the role of robots and AI in our life here a list of some of our most recent programmes and articles.
Run by robots: will AI work for us or enslave us? – Future Intelligence
MEPs put human rights before robots – Future Intelligence
PassWord ‘Should Robots get rights?’
