{"id":2372,"date":"2017-01-09T06:46:14","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T11:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/?p=2372"},"modified":"2017-01-08T21:57:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T02:57:39","slug":"monday-morning-insight-robot-overlords-and-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/monday-morning-insight-robot-overlords-and-hope\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Insight: Robot Overlords, and Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"
(Another in the continuing series of quotes to start the week<\/a>.)<\/em><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today marks a lot of birthdays of people I might have quoted — guitarist Jimmy Page (1944), singer-songwriter Joan Baez (1941), author Stuart Woods (1938), actor Bob Denver (1935), football player Bart Starr (1934), President Richard Nixon (1913) — and particularly science fiction luminary Algis Budrys (1931). But as I thought about it I decided I’d like to quote a different science fiction luminary.<\/p>\n

Czech author and playwright Karel \u010capek was born on this date in 1890, and he is best known as the author of the 1920 play R.U.R.<\/em>\u00a0R.U.R. stands for “Rossum’s Universal Robots” — in Czech, “Rossumovi Univerz\u00e1ln\u00ed Roboti” — which, in addition to marking the first use of the word “robot,” became the pathfinder for every story that postulated the eventual subjugation of the human race by our robot overlords.<\/p>\n

Anyway, in Act Two of the play, after the head of Rossum’s and one of the robots\u00a0state that they “only meant it for the best” — a familiar refrain! — two of the top robot builders combine to observe that<\/p>\n

… mankind will remain. In twenty years\u2019 time the world will belong to them once more; even if there\u2019s nothing more than a few savages on a tiny island … that will be a beginning. And any beginning is better than nothing. In a thousand years they\u2019ll have caught up with us again, and then go on further than we ever did … and fulfil the dreams we\u2019ve only ever talked about.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Without spoiling the R.U.R.<\/em> story, I find that to be a very hopeful message to hang on to for whatever difficulties we may face. “Mankind will remain…. and any beginning is better than nothing.”<\/p>\n

\"Robots\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(“Robots,” by Bart Heird, on Flickr, under Creative Commons.)<\/em><\/h5>\n

 <\/p>\n

While we’re at it, I also think this quote from \u010capek’s 1922 novel The Absolute at Large<\/em> is pretty funny:<\/p>\n

You can have a revolution wherever you like, except in a government office; even were the world to come to an end, you’d have to destroy the universe first and then government offices.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think almost anyone who has worked in a government office can relate to that. But never fear,\u00a0“Mankind will remain…. and any beginning is better than nothing”!<\/p>\n

Have a great week!<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Another in the continuing series of quotes to start the week.)   Today marks a lot of birthdays of people I might have quoted — guitarist Jimmy Page (1944), singer-songwriter Joan Baez (1941), author Stuart Woods (1938), actor Bob Denver (1935), football player Bart Starr (1934), President Richard Nixon (1913) \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[444,386],"class_list":["post-2372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings","tag-quotes","tag-science-fiction-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2372"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2374,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2372\/revisions\/2374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}