Is This A Robot?

FanYou know those cool robots they have now?

A friend of mine has one that cleans the pool in her back yard.

I’ve toyed with the idea of getting one of those carpet cleaning robots.

Some people have lawn mowers that work the same way.

But robots don’t have to move from place to place in order to count as robots. The assembly-line robots in Detroit auto plants, for example, are fixed in one spot.

This got me to thinking: What exactly is a robot? Unless we artificially restrict the term to meaning “android” (i.e., a man-shaped robot) then they seem to be any device that, while activated, automatically performs a task that used to be performed by human effort. (See Wikipedia’s entry for more.)

So I started thinking: I’ve got this tall, oscillating fan in my bedroom. Is it a robot?

They’ve had fans for centuries, but not automatic ones. Before this century you either used a small hand fan to fan yourself (as one sometimes still does) or you had a servant use a large fan to cool a whole room. (Y’know, like in all those movies where Egyptian rulers are being fanned with the big, feathered fans.)

The oscillating fans we use today perform this function without the use of human labor.

That seems to make them robots.

Dish washers and washing machines seem to be, too. People used to (and sometimes still do) perform those tasks by hand.

HERE’S A STORY SAYING ROBOT USAGE IS EXPECTED TO SURGE SEVEN-FOLD BY 2007.

It seems to me that the robots are already here. They infiltrated our society a long time ago.

In preparation for the Robot Uprising.

I’m going to be sleeping lightly tonight.

I’ve got a robot in my bedroom.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

10 thoughts on “Is This A Robot?”

  1. Some people have lawn mowers that work the same way.
    Isn’t that dangerous? What if there are kids in the neighbourhood?

  2. My roommate has a remote-controlled floor fan with computer chips and servomotors in it. That is essentially the same as the “robots” being sold in toy stores, except that it is not anthropomorphic.

  4. I remember a Danny Dunn story I read as a kid where a thermostat was described by Professor Bulfinch as being a robot, because it was autonomously activated and deactivated.
    Now, if that isn’t authoratative, what is?

  5. The question about the oscillating fan is a profound question.
    We might ask a similar question about life. Is an ameba alive? Single cell protozoans? How about a virus?
    If robotics keep advancing at this pace, it will probably take a long time to blur the line between robots and life forms, but I think it will eventually be a question the Church will need to address. Will robots be allowed to take communion? Will we be able to destroy robots with no regard for the consequences of our actions. These aren’t pressing questions, but there’s little doubt, at our current pace of technological advancement, robots will resemble human life in many aspects and will surpass human life in many other aspects. It might take a 1000 years or more, or it might take 50, we just don’t know.
    For now, we see the osciallating fan as something we can toss out in the dump, but when we have robots more intelligent than us, it may be viewed in a different light.

  6. Jerry,
    The Genesis account distinguishes between creatures which have the “nephesh hayyah” or soul, and those which do not. Plants and probably amoeba, etc., do not, but mammals and birds -do-.
    I suspect that Church theologians can derive the principle in that and all will be well.

  7. The Roomba vacuum robot is pretty good, but not on thicker carpets (only thin, hard carpet and hard floors). It’s by no means a ‘cleaner’ – more of a ‘duster.’
    It’s more fun just to watch the thing bump into everything (and it scares the heck out of little animals and little kids!).

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