... Nige is right about this one: Brain Again.
I don't want to get bogged down in detail, but the opening sentence has a bit of a problem:
'"Long before you decided to read this story, your brain may have already said "click that link".'
Deciding to click the link and read the story are two separate operations. In fact, after reading that sentence, I decided I'd pass on the article.
One group of people seems to want to prove that we are robots. Another group, pondering that we are developing more and more sophisticated robots, worry about those robots shaking off the control of their makers and becoming free agents. Interestingly, religious folk believe that God created man to be a free person, not a robot.
In the meantime, Who did actually invent the word "robot" and what does it mean?
Update: Dave Lull sends along ROBODROID, to help us avoid unnecessary confusion.
Post bumped up.
But beware of "An unhuman confusion".
ReplyDeleteFrank, the word robot apparently entered the language in the Czech writer Karel Capek's play R.U.R. - but he said it was his brother who actually invented it. The root is robota, which in Czech means serf labour or drudgery. An obscure origin for a word that seems so right and inevitable.
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