WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 160, 8 June 1939, Page 11

WORLD ACHIEVEMENT

THE ROBOTS. "Wherever ivo go there are mechanical guards responsible for our safety. There lias never been such an age as ours for the number of unerring gadgets which protect us and help us and serve us. We think at once of the traffic signals which tell us to slop, and then, alter a warning, graciously permit us to go. We have come to obey them as mechanically as they order us about. But controls are all about us now. There is the gyroscopic control which keeps our ships anil planes on their courses, silent, eliuient, unalterable servants that will have nothing to do with those who try to move them from the appointed path. There is the automatic safety-valve on the locomotive—without it the boiler might burst. There is the kindly hut imperious voice at many underground stations which says, “Lift Ascending,” or perhaps, “Stand away from the gates, please.” "We see no one, but the robot voice warns us, and it never makes a mistake. There is the safety switch putting out electric circuits in ’ jilunes . and ears. There is the stop-lamp behind a car—going on without our ever having to think about it, plainly telling the driver behind that we have applied the brakes. There is the photo-electric cell which warns us of burglars, lights lamps on buoys at sea, or warns us that there is an outbreak of fire in a ship or mill. So. if Wo took a few minutes to look round this wonderful world, we should see in scores of ways that men have achieved success in the art of pushing responsibility off their own. hands into the hands of some mechanical, process. It is all very wonderful—and it should give us more time to live. But does it?—(L).