🦺 History of Robotics

Welcome to the 28th edition of Safe For Work.

The history of robotics predates recorded history, but is well connected to science fiction. The Czech author Kapek invented the word robot in his scifi play R.U.R in 1920. It is cleverly derived from the czech word for ‘forced labour.’ Concepts of robots have been around at least since the Greek mathematician envisioned a ‘robotic’ pigeon in the 4th Century.

For a scifi tale with many safety implications and a thread from the Greeks to the modern day, we present this week’s story.

Automat(i)on

Have you ever heard of Talos? Let me tell you a story.

There’s a beautiful woman-- isn’t there always? Her name is Europa, like the moon, but actually the other way around. And like so many moons and like so many beautiful women, the eyes of a god fall upon her, and like so many eyes, they belong to Zeus.

Have you ever heard of Zeus? I don’t think I need to tell you that story. He sees Europa, and he does what he always does, which is take her, and take her, and take her away.

“I can’t not be what I am,” says Zeus, by way of explanation, and is he entirely wrong? Would Leda disagree? Would Callisto (like the moon, but the other way around)? Would Demeter?-- that one’s an asteroid.

There’s not a mortal man in the world, either, who would disagree. There’s not a one of them who would see Europa, lovely as she is, and not want her for himself.

“They can’t not be what they are,” says Zeus, and is he entirely wrong about that, either? Surely, not.

So what does he do? He takes her, and takes her, and takes her away, to a place called Crete, and he hides her there, and just to make sure that no one else can ever have her, he calls to his God of the Forge, Hephaestus, and he commands that a great giant guardian be built to protect the island and ensure that none but he himself may ever reach Europa.

Hephaestus makes Talos perfectly, and he makes Talos flawed, because he is flawed by his fall into the fire, and he can’t not be what he is. He makes the giant’s body out of pure metal, impervious to stones and swords and thrown spears and curses and fire and hunger and housing-crises and student-loans and medical bills. He gives the giant a great club to carry, with which to smash whatever might try to sneak past him. He gives the giant clever, sharp eyes.

And then he gives the giant Talos, the unstoppable Talos, the surely indestructible Talos a single vein, running from his left ankle up and into his neck, filled with humming, buzzing magical blood. He holds shut the vein with a single bronze nail. He sends out his automaton into the world. And Talos does, in every way, just as he is meant to do.

Talos paces the island of Crete, back and forth, three times, every single day. Every single day. Every single day-- three times, back and forth, three times. For ten years. For fifty years. After Europa is dead and gone and gone and dead, he paces back and forth. He can’t not be what he is.

Two-thousand times a day, a circuit-board makes the journey along a conveyor-belt. Two-thousand times a day, it is welded here. It is soldered there. It is rotated slightly in one place so that it can be more easily attached to another component a few feet down the line. Two-thousand times a day, two hands lift a cardboard box until they bleed. Two-million times a day, cells divide, and you can’t do that without glucose, and you can’t do that without food, and you can’t do that without work, and you can’t do that without something to do.

Packages to ship. Deliveries to make. Things to build. Families to feed. Pick up the pace, put down an order, mishear a voice and send someone down the wrong branch of a phone-tree. Gods and Goddesses, people in stories, people in button-downs, people in aprons, they can’t not be what they are.

Aphrodite can’t not be what she is. A hundred years after Europa, she sees Medea, who is the beautiful daughter of a mighty and glorious king, and she sees Jason, who is the lovely and heroic son of a mighty and glorious king (sent on an impossible quest, of course, like so many sons of kings), and she simply must put them together, that’s all she can bear to do. So she sends little Eros down to strike Medea with an arrow, and it’s just how things go, isn’t it?

Medea is locked onto her path of loving Jason, of doing anything for Jason-- by the time she stands alone and tiny before the tower Talos, she has already betrayed her father and her kingdom for Jason. She can’t not be what she is. She can see herself too clearly, and she can’t do a damn thing about it.

“Please,” she says, and “Please,” she begs, “let my lover pass you and retrieve the Golden Fleece that he has been sent to collect, so that I may go home with him and live a wonderful life.”

But-- “I can’t not be what I am,” the giant tells her. He is sorry. He wishes he could. That’s all he wishes. With only one vein, he can only wish one thing, which is that he could stop. He has no wish about what he might be doing instead, or afterwards.

And Medea is sorry, too. And she is terrified. Like she has never been before. She is terrified that Jason will go home without her if she fails him. Marry someone else. Father someone else’s children. Forget about her-- as though she had never even existed at all.

She is desperate. She will do anything-- she will say anything-- she will go anywhere, and sacrifice whatever it takes of herself and her own heart for Jason-- just to make sure that no one else can ever have him, for all the good it won’t do.

I write her a letter and ask her to help me. I send her a petition to sign. There is a machine in a place where I used to sit. A great giant automaton, with sharp, clever eyes, and I am sure that it is my enemy, like so many people have made me sure of so many things.

A machine with a single vein running from its spine across the floor, into the wall, humming and buzzing with the blood of voltage. It can’t not be what it is. “And we can’t eat,” I say, and so many people say with me.

We are desperate. We shout up at windows, we shout into sewer-drains, we shout into our own cupped hands-- “We cannot eat. We have no homes. We cannot pay our student-loans. We cannot pay our medical bills. We have no hopes.”

We are made flawed, aren’t we?

“The market can’t not be what it is,” says Hephaestus by way of explanation, and he can’t not be what he is, either. He buys an entire neighborhood in Philadelphia-- a hundred houses, a school, a hospital, some restaurants-- just to make sure that no one else can ever have it.

In the end, Medea defeats Talos, but Hephaestus is hardly bothered.

In one version of the story, she brews a magic something-or-other to poison the great giant. In another version, what she does is she tricks him into pulling the nail out of his own vein, and letting his own humming, buzzing, blood drain out into the dirt of the hilltop on which he stands, overlooking the beach, the sea, the distant ship. She tells him that that bronze nail is the only thing holding him to this Earth, and is she entirely wrong? She tells him that if he pulls it out, he will become immortal. (It won’t make any sort of difference now. You can’t kill it, now. It’s on a hundred different servers, now. It’s all on the cloud, now, and you don’t know where any of them are-- and making new ones is cheap.)

She knows what he is, the giant. She can see him too clearly. And she knows that even he is afraid to die. He is terrified.

The waves wash over his body and over his body and over his body, and for all the strength that metal has against stones and swords, the sea wins. He rusts away into soft sand to drop a towel on and watch the gulls circling and think about nothing, really-- as though he had never even existed at all. A God of the Forge, a real innovator, a real go-getter lays back and the sand wants to bite him, but it is only soft sand, and it can’t not be what it is.

See you next week as we wrap up our exploration of safety underwater in outer space. Stay safe.