On Alexandrakitty.com, words are not neutral. They carry history, metaphors, and marching orders. Some we keep. Some we retire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One word I am retiring is \u201crobot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The term comes from the Czech\u00a0robota<\/em>, forced labour, the compulsory work of serfs for their lords. It enters English in Karel \u010capek\u2019s 1920 play\u00a0R.U.R.<\/em>, where artificial workers are literally manufactured servants, created for drudgery and disposability. Dig further back into Old Church Slavonic and you find\u00a0rabota<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cservitude\u201d) from\u00a0rab<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cslave\u201d), with cognates across Slavic languages, including Serbian \u201crob.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words: the word \u201crobot\u201d bakes slavery into the hardware.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am not interested in normalizing that metaphor, even in fiction. I write about propaganda, capture, and systems that grade human beings as livestock. I do not need to borrow a vocabulary that already assumes a master\u2013slave relation as the default.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, some house rules:<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not about being precious with language. It is about refusing a frame. If you keep calling something \u201cslave,\u201d you will eventually treat it, and anything you classify alongside it, as disposable. I am more interested in naming power structures directly: extraction apparatus, grading infrastructure, predictive machine, propaganda system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You are free, of course, to use whatever words you like. But on this site, \u201crobot\u201d is retired. The barn is already full of livestock metaphors. We do not need one more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On Alexandrakitty.com, words are not neutral. They carry history, metaphors, and marching orders. Some we keep. Some we retire. One word I am retiring is \u201crobot.\u201d The term comes from the Czech\u00a0robota, forced labour, the compulsory work of serfs for their lords. It enters English in Karel \u010capek\u2019s 1920 play\u00a0R.U.R., where artificial workers are literally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,7,186,26],"class_list":["post-3240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alexandra-kitty","tag-ai","tag-alexandra-kitty","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-propaganda"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n