Abstract

Robots have become increasingly present in the human environment. As this happens, the question of the relationship of humans and robots is becoming more urgent. Also, much more broadly, the question of the relationship of robots to organic things, to the living, to nature itself, is coming to the fore. Even though the term robot only became common at the beginning of the twentieth century, the concept of an artificial being is a very old one, dating back to the ancient world. Over this long period of time the notion of what constituted a robot, including how it was technically constructed, underwent multiple changes. Five distinct narratives accompany the figure of the robot and its position in the human world. These narratives range from robots as servants to concepts of a post-biological world, and the so-called “Novocene” (Lovelock, Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence. Penguin Books, Milton Keynes, 2019) in which humans and artificial intelligences live side-by-side. This article outlines the history of the robot and its accompanying narratives, and it raises the question of the position of robots in a web of diverse entities.