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At 20:43 17/05/00 -0400, you wrote:
>
>b) Going back to the original literary use of the word, you
> write that a robot is nothing but a worker, a universal
> worker and suggest that it can be understood as abstract
> labour.
>
> Yet, I have a definition which suggests that a "robot"
> is a Czech word for slave:
>
> That doesn't sound like abstract labour to me.
The point about them was that they were universal robots, and as
such able to displace any human worker. A universal robot, capable
of any type of labour, is an abstract labourer, its labour would
be productive of value in the same way as human labour.
It is this ability to turn ones hand, with training, to any trade
that differentiates humans from other contemporary workers
such as dogs or horses.
What I am saying is that universal robots are nothing to be
dispised. That is what we all are. If artificial ones existed
they would be class allies. That is what Philip K Dick was
on about in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
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