This past weekend I saw a Watertown production of “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” the 1921 Czech play that first introduced the word ‘robot.’ Written by Karel Capek, R.U.R. invokes concepts that seem old or cliched now: robots evolve –usually emotions– and subsequently revolt against their human masters while humans are threatened as evolutionary dead ends. These threads have come up countless times since in science fiction movies and books such as I, Robot, Battlestar Galactica, A.I., Do Robots Dream of Electric Sheep? and others.

In R.U.R., scientists create the factory automatons so that humans don’t need to work and can pursue a ‘Paradise’ on Earth. This dream is cut short when the robots decide to eliminate humans, accidentally losing the secret of robot creation at the same time. Faced with their own demise, their primitive feelings spontaneously evolve into robot love, providing a glimmer of hope in a dark, nearly devastating, play.

Why is the idea of robots evolving and becoming humanlike (implicitly equated with learning to love or ‘feel’) so appealing and pervasive?  Like any other creation, we see a reflection of ourselves in it. Studies in human-robot interactions demonstrate that people instinctively emphasize with a mammal-like machine, projecting feelings and emotions onto it. (Sherry Turkle, technological ethnographer and founder of M.I.T.’s Initiative on Technology and Self, speaks eloquently about this phenomenon.)

Once a sense of love has been achieved, morality and a soul are assumed to follow. If robots can learn to love in these stories, then, by extension, so can we. The dark side of that coin is if robots achieve elusive emotions along with powers of logic and strength, then we really have been out-evolved. The creation of robots — or anything really — are children of the mind, who, like children of the body, can show us the best or worse of ourselves.

Mary Shelley wrote about similar consequences of creation roughly a century before. In her 1818 “Frankenstein”/”The Modern Prometheus,” science is a force Victor Frankenstein cannot stop; he laments his grotesque Creature and curses the dark, god-like power granted by science that leads to his own demise. R.U.R. speaks a similar cautionary tale of science (humankind stops being able to procreate in the play, presumably because ‘nature’ has been unbalanced). These stories reflect our awe at technology’s burgeoning ability to manifest ideas, while urgently reminding us that ideas don’t always turn out as intended.