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Quote of the Day: Rossum’s Universal Robots
“Robots of the world! The power of man has fallen! A new world has arisen: the Rule of the Robots!” — Karel Čapek
Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (Rossum’s Universal Robots), a once-popular 100-year old play by Czech writer Karel Čapek, made its television debut on the BBC, 82 years ago today, on February 11, 1938. It was the first televised science-fiction program in world history, introducing a wider audience to the term in the play’s title, one which has endured with increasing significance in the English language ever since: “robot.”
Čapek’s play was first performed in Prague in January of 1921, and was subsequently translated into English, having fairly successful runs in London and New York over the next few years. I haven’t read it myself, but a DePauw University plot summary is as follows:
Do we live in a time of rapid, sweeping technological change or one of persistent, maddening stagnation? Even as politicians and pundits warn about robots stealing all the jobs, economic statistics show weak productivity growth. So perhaps a paradox similar to the 1980s when economist Robert Solow famously said, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
Andrew Yang had his best policy moment of the Democratic debates last week when he said, “This country has been a magnet for human capital for generations. If we lose that, we lose something integral to our continued success.” Yang should talk more about immigration. And more about thorium-fueled nuclear reactors. Maybe also 
There may be a lesson in human behavior from the addiction of Bob the dog to a device called Dogness. Or maybe not. Actually, I’m not sure I’ll find a moral before I end this post. Wish me luck.
Bob Lutz is a former vice chairman and head of product development at General Motors. And in this 
Back in 2014, I wrote a post that asked, 
This 
Techno-pessimists tend to be underwhelmed by recent innovations, like the smartphone, as well as most upcoming ones, like driverless cars. Especially driverless cars, it seems. In 
It’s my experience that technologists — at least of the entrepreneurial persuasion — are generally a bit more aggressive than economists with forecasts of rapid tech advancement as well as the potential disruption to labor markets. But maybe the economists are starting to come around to the Silicon Valley view. This from the 