The Riddle of the Robots
| Author | Jon Bing |
| Position | Professor, dr juris |
| Pages | 197-206 |
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The Riddle of the Robots1
Page 197
In 1993, I made a journey to Chicago, an excursion with some colleagues and graduate students to visit the Chicago-Kent School of Law and other institutions related with my own research area, computers and law.
During the stay, we visited the Art Institute of Chicago. And there I made a remarkable discovery. In its collection I discovered a small three-dimensional figure made of cardboard.2 The head is reminiscent of a cathode ray tube; the body is made up of boxes decorated with numbers, the feet are two tubes. Anybody would interpret this figure as a robot, and this is indeed the name of the artwork. The artist is Alexandra Alexandrovna Exter, and she made this small figure in 1925.
It was the date that puzzled me. "Robot" is a rather recent word. It was used the first time by the Czech author Karel Capek (1890-1938). Capek was an important and profilic author, famous for his many novels and plays. Many have read War with the Newts (1936), which is a very funny and very serious science fiction novel ridiculing the emergence of the Nazi movement, and indicating Capek's strong political involvement.
His play R.U.R., which is an abbreviation for "Rossum's Universal Robots", is also of a political nature. In this play, the main character is Rossum, an industrialist who creates artificial beings from biological material in order to have slaves in his production plants. There is a description of the process of building these beings:
'Spinning mills for weaving nerves and veins. Miles and miles of digestive tubes ... in the fitting-shed, all the parts are put together like motorcars. They learn to speak, write and count. They have astonishing memories. But they never think of anything new. Then they are sorted out and distributed. Fifteen thousand daily, not counting a regular percentage of defective specimens which are thrown into the stamping-mill ...'
It is maintained that the idea of such a play came to Capek rather suddenly, and that he immediately discussed his idea with his brother Josef, who was a cubist painter.
"But," the author said, "I don't know what to call these artificial workers. I could call them Labori, but that strikes me as a bit bookish." "Then call them Robots," the painter muttered, brush in mouth, and went on painting. And that's how it was. Thus was the word Robot born; let this acknowledge its true creator.3' The word 'robot' is derived from the Czech word 'robota', which means drudgery or 'servitude', and 'robotnik', who is a 'servant' or a 'serf'.
Page 198
The play R.U.R. opened in Prague early 1921 and was extremely successful. It was produced in New York in 1922, and the English translation of the play was published in 1923.
Perhaps this is sufficient to explain what puzzled me with the figure of Alexandra Exter. For in Capek's play, the robots are artificial human beings - they look exactly like humans, they would be what in modern science fiction jargon is known as an 'android' or a 'biomat', a machinelike man. But 'robot' is reserved for something different, for a mechanical man or a manlike machine, an artificial being built of hardware.
The word was created in 1921. Today it has a different meaning from what it originally intended. Somewhere along the line, the meaning changed from 'machinelike man' to 'manlike machine'. And that point in time would seem to be located between 1921 and 1925 - because the figure of Exter is obviously that of a 'manlike machine', a robot in the modern sense of the word.
I admit it is a little mystery. But my own preoccupation with science fiction,4artificial intelligence and robots made this an intriguing one and this essay is an explanation of the mystery.
It cannot be a coincidence that Capek wrote his play about the artificial slave workers in the city of Prague. The famous Jewish ghetto of Prague is symbolised by the Golem.
A Golem is an artificial being, created by Man from earth and clay. It is said to be mentioned in Psalm 139:15-16:
'My bones were not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, Fashioned as in the depths of the earth; Your eyes foresaw my actions; In your book all are written down; My days were shaped, before one came to be.'
The 'depths of the earth' is a metaphor for the womb, emphasising the mysterious operations occurring there. And legend tells that at the end of the 16th century, rabbi Judah Löw followed the secret formula and fashioned in secret an artificial being from clay dug out of the banks of the river, and gave him life by placing a "Schem" - a capsule containing piece of paper with a cabbalistic word - in the mouth of the giant.
Rabbi Judah Löw, called The High Rabbi Löw because he was unusually tall, is a real person (1520- 1609), his full name was Jehuda Liva ben Becalel. He was an acknowledged theological scholar, and shared his time between Prague and Krakow in Poland. In Prague, he founded the Talmud school Klause, part of the ghetto. His grave can be seen in the cemetery, and still today one may find leaves weighted down by pebbles on his gravestone, he is believed to be a powerful rabbi whose spirit can be called upon for intercession.
The ghetto was the part of town in which the Jews were permitted to live. The living space was cramped, the lodgings small, the ghetto crowded. But it was generally believed to be very rich, as the Jews were successful business people. And there was considerable tension between the Jews and the rest of the population in the city - it was rumoured, for instance, that Jews ate babies in their un-Christian rituals, especially at Easter. The Golem was created by rabbi Löw as a defender of the ghetto, and over time the Golem became the symbol of the spirit of the Ghetto, like it appears in the well known novel The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (1868-1932). Meyrink was another Czech author living in Prague, and his novel was published in 1915, a few years predating Capek's R.U.R. Still today clay figurines and other trinkets representing the Golem are popular souvenirs sold in the Ghetto. And the tale of the Golem still continues to fascinate writers, one of the more recent demonstrations is Marge Piercy He, She, and It (1991).5
Page 199
In the original legend of the Golem, the artificial giant was somewhat simpleminded, taking all orders literally - in one episode, he does like the sorcerer's apprentice, when asked to fetch water, he continues to do so also even when the bowl overflows, and the house is flooded, the housekeeper having forgotten to ask him to stop.
Rumours of the giant reached the emperor Rudolph II of the Hapsburgs. His court must at this time have been a remarkable place, the emperor collected scholars and artists around him, and among them was another fascinating figure of that time, the astronomer Johannes Kepler. One may speculate on what form a dialogue between him and rabbi Löw would have taken, but we do not know whether they actually met.
It is said, however, that the court protocols of 22 February 1592 indicates that rabbi Löw was called to an audience before the emperor, with prince Bertier also present. The protocols do not tell what was said at this meeting, but leaving, rabbi Löw stated, 'We do not need Jossele Golem anymore.'
With this two friends and relatives Jakob Katz and Jakob Sosson, rabbi Löw takes the Golem to the chamber in the tower of the Altneu synagogue, which still stands at the edge of the ghetto. Here he reads a secret cabbalist formula over the Golem, reducing him once again to clay and dust.
It has been argued, even proved, that the tale of the Golem is much older than rabbi Löw, and that there are better candidates for his part in the story. 'Golem' shall also have been used in Jiddish for a simpleminded person, nearly synonymous with a village idiot. This is of little concern in our context - the living tradition attributed the creation of the man of clay to rabbi Löw, and he became an obedient slave labourer.
As the novel of Meyrink demonstrates, the legend was very much alive at the time of Capek. One of Capek's acquaintances was the journalist Egon Erwin Kisch (1885-1948), who at that time worked in the German language newspaper Bohemia in Prague, writing local stories. Kisch would go on to become a famous reporter, earning himself the nick-name 'Der rasende Reporter' or 'The furious Reporter', especially due to his reports from the Spanish Civil War and other war theatres. His interest for the alleys and tales of Prague led him to write 'Dem Golem auf der Spur',6 where he traced the legend of rabbi Löw and his Golem. He entered the tower chamber of the Altneu synagogue and looked for the clay or dust remaining of the Golem, but without success.
Therefore, when Capek conceived his idea of the industrialist Rossum and his artificial slave labourers, the Golem provided an obvious reference for his robots. But rather than creating them from clay and mystic rituals, Capek let them be manufactured in vats similar to the chemicals provided for the factories of his own and modern age.
However, this was not the first (nor the last, as we have seen) time that the tale of the Golem inspired the creation of an artificial being which since then has haunted our literature.
In 1816, the British poet Lord Byron...
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