Meanwhile, pre-Change history parallels ours as we learn that the Japanese Imperial ceremonial sword is not where it was thought to be.
Friday, 10 November 2017
Ken And Grok
Meanwhile, pre-Change history parallels ours as we learn that the Japanese Imperial ceremonial sword is not where it was thought to be.
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14 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Ha, ha!!! I admit to sometimes using "grok" myself. And I knew "waldo" is another Heinleinian neologism which entered English usage. And I think Asimov's "robot" became commonly used in English because of his Robot stories. And I like to use Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoomian greetings word "kaor."
I think it was Poul Anderson who contributed "xenosophont" and "sophotect" to English. I recall some characters occasionally using "xeno" in his Technic stories in referring to non-humans.
Sean
Paul and Sean:
I never even read *Stranger in a Strange Land*, but I picked up "grok" as a word for "understand" during my college years (the late '70s). Especially as an expression of NON-comprehension: "I fail to grok."
Kaor, DAVID!
That too is a cool use of "grok." (Smiles)
Sean
"Robot" originally meant "forced labor" in Czech, hence Capek's "robots" in his influential play "R.U.R.". It's from the same PIE root as the German word "arbeit" and related to "rab, rabu", meaning "slave".
Dear Mr. Stirling,
And hence "robot" did not originally mean artificial devices and machines programmed to do work.
Sean
Sean,
"Robotnik" means "worker" in Polish.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That is cool! And it brings up the question of how Polish translations of SF from the UK and US handle the Asimovian use of "robot" as a computerized machine programmed to do work.
Sean
One of the many, many sinister things about the early Bolsheviks was that in their internal communications they tended to elide the Russian word for "labor force" with the phonologically similar (and shorter) "slave force".
They were fairly upfront about this basic attitude. To quote Trotsky, who on this issue completely agreed with Stalin:
"It is said that forced labor is unproductive. This means that the whole socialist economy is doomed to be scrapped, because there is no other way of attaining socialism except through the command allocation of the entire labor force by the economic center."
Two principles of Bolshevism: workers' democracy and an economic plan. The first principle existed but was lost very early.
Dear Mr. Stirling and Paul,
I'm not in the LEAST surprised the Bolsheviks (my anger and disgust for them makes it difficult to avoid using VERY pejorative words in addition) thought and talked like that. They were brutal, ruthless, fanatical, and utterly cynical (and soon to be utterly corrupt as well). The first volume of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, with its many quotes from the writings of Lenin, AMPLY bears out what you said about them.
Paul, I don't in the LEAST believe the top Bolsheviks, Lenin and his gang, actually believed in any kind of real democracy. It was always cynical window dressing and propaganda. And REAL economists like Bohm-Bawerk (not sure I got the name right) and Ludwig von Mises had exploded Marxist "economics" by the time Lenin grabbed power in Russia.
Sean
Sean,
I have met potential Stalins on the Left but I also know many intelligent, informed, well-intentioned people whose efforts might lead neither to Bad nor to Business As Usual but to Better - but we don't know what will happen. Hopefully, technology and society will continue to advance and various potential catastrophes, like a nuclear exchange, will be averted.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Too much harm has been done by well intentioned persons whose "reforms" always seem to have disastrous, unintended side effects, for me to put much trust in them. But I certainly hope advances in technology will also lead to social and political improvements. It's my view that will be possible only under a LIMITED state with an economy as free as possible. And I certainly hope we avoid nuclear strikes by either rogue dictators like Kim Jong Un or fanatical jihadists!
Sean
My understanding is robot had become commonly used if SF for mechanical humanoids (IIRC the Robots of RUR were more like genetically engineered humanoids for menial labor) before Asimov started writing. Asimov did however coin the term 'robotics' for the study of how to make such mechanical humanoids.
Sean:
According to the Wikipedia article on von Mises he introduced his "Economic Calculation Problem" in 1920, so about the same time as the Bolsheviks were trying to introduce Socialism.
I had thought his career was a bit later than that.
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