A play about the revolt of human workers not machines gave us the word 'robot'

"As AI and robots threaten to replace human work and maybe even humans, the recent popularity of anti-robot lingo seems to reflect growing dissent to our changing relationship to robots. But you might not know that the word itself robot first appeared in our lexicon with a cultural critique already built in. In this edition of Word of the Week, we look at how "robot" went from referring to machine-like humans to human-like machines in the span of about 100 years."

"Like clanker, robot came from sci-fi, too. Czech writer Karel Capek first imagined the robot in his 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzalni Roboti, which was translated in English versions as Rossum's Universal Robots). In the satirical melodrama, the idealist Harry Domin runs a factory that churns out soulless humanoid workers made of synthetic flesh and blood. It was Capek's thinly veiled critique of the era's sociopolitical climate, according to Tobias Higbie, a professor of history and labor studies at the University of California, Los Angeles."

""He did look at the modernity of the robots as something that was negative," Higbie said. "Modernity is turning us all into machines that's kind of the message and the course of the play." The play landed right after the Russian Revolution and World War I, and during industrialization all of which pitted the working-classes against the upper classes and sparked debates over the effects automated labor was having on human workers."

Slang terms like 'clanker', 'rust bucket', and 'tinskin' are increasingly used to disparage robots as AI and machines threaten jobs and human roles. The popularity of anti-robot language reflects growing dissent toward changing human-robot relationships and fears about replacement. The word "robot" entered English usage about a century ago in a theatrical work that portrayed soulless humanoid laborers made of synthetic flesh and blood. That original usage served as a critique of modernity and industrialization, suggesting mechanization was dehumanizing workers. The historical context included postwar upheaval, revolution, and mass-production assembly lines that intensified labor tensions.

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