Robots. How many know the origin of this word? For example I thought it was an English word. But instead! But I'm starting to tell this story from the beginning :-) I wanted to read an enlightened book. Not for studing something but to keep my joy of reading in tune with something that would give me joy :-) My hands received a book: Retrieving your Light by Neale Donald Walsh. Oh! - I thought - here it is my book. |
In the meantime, I start to read some titles of Isaac Asimov's books. I feel home with his works.
Will I have read everything he has written?
The titles with the name of a robot, Norby, appear bright to me.
I decide to take these. I discover that they are considered fiction for young people and that they aren't on the bookshelves. I have to ask the librarian to look for them. She finds them in a storage closet.
And I discovered that, Norby the mixed-up robot, it's my enlightened book :-)
It brought me joy, simplicity and this interesting info.
Personally, like I said before, I always believed that the word robot was English, but instead! Here is the true nature of the word. The introduction of book is written in Italian and I translated it into English (sorry for any possible mistake).
[….] Karel Čapek, Czechoslovakian writer, was the first to talk about robots. He, in 1920, published a drama entitled R.U.R.. This work was translated into English in 1923. The initials of the title mean Rossum's Universal Robots.
The protagonist, Rossum, undertakes a mass production of artificial beings that should carry out the work of mankind.
The word robot comes from robota, a Czechoslovakian term, which means servile work. In ancient Slavic, rob means slave. So, basically, a robot is a slave. But in translating Karel Čapek's drama in English, the original word robot has been preserved. Slave, in fact, is a word commonly used for humans. It would not have helped to make the difference between the artificial quality of Rossum's universal robots and the natural quality of human beings forced into servile work.
Therefore, not being an English word, robot could be left in its original form even in translation for better designating artificial slaves, so as not to confuse them with human slaves.
The Karel Čapek's drama is considered horrible by most people, but has won immortality for its word: robot.
Since 1926, when science fiction magazines began to appear in the United States, robots have almost always been described as made by metal. Consequently, the word robot specifically refers to an artificial being built almost entirely, or completely, by metal.
It's funny, because Karel Čapek - in R.U.R. - invented this word to define artificial human beings, i.e. androids. Android, in fact, is an artificial human being built with substances as similar as possible to human tissues.
Isaac Asimov is known to have codified - in the 40s - the three laws of robotics.
Robots grew and multiplied in great disarray in the stories published in popular magazines. And Isaac Asimov was annoyed. By force of disorder, robots arrived, sooner or later, to rebel against their creators. To Asimov it seemed neither fair nor recommended. As a reader, he had begun to desire more orderly stories with more optimistic endings. If mankind created robots, did robots have to rebel?
Could a way be found to prevent rebellion? If there were laws for human beings, why not have laws for robots? Since the robots were created by mankind, it would have been easy to introduce the right law into these creatures. [….]
After all his robots, Asimov wrote with his daughter about Norby, an mixed up robot. Created with terrestrial parts and rearranged with extra-terrestrial parts. It has its own personality and feelings. He is aware of himself and of his own abilities. He doesn't want to have an owner, but a friend. Jeff is the guy who bought it and he is fond of it. Norby always helps him, just as he always helps the other characters connected to Jeff.
He has mini-antigravity-G and he can travel into hyperspace.
In addition, Norby will find himself having new friends: lot of female dragons and the oldest dragon :-) In the first book, Norby explains hyperspace to Jeff in this way.[….] For the real thing, I dip into hyperspace, and I can do anywhere, anytime. There is unlimited energy in hyperspace [….] Hyperspace is nothingness. It isn't space or time, it as no up or down or where or when. When I'm in it, I can sense a.. well, a sort of.. I guess it's a pattern that isn't really there but is potentially there because that's what the actual |
[….] I didn't say I could explain it. I can't. All I know is the hyperspace is definitely potential – I mean - it is potentially something, as if it's got reserve energy that comes into use for creating an universe, that of course it's actually part of itself.
[….] How is an universe created?
I think that a spot in hyperspace suddenly gains a where and a when. How it's done or happens is beyond even me, so of course it's beyond everyone in the Solar System, and even if I could explain it to you, you wouldn't know how to understand it. [….]
But as a start it's not bad at all. Especially for young people fiction.
(If you'd like to read Norby and its adventures, you can borrow it for 14 days free on archive.org)