🛕Ancient automata

The concept ‘robot’ originates from Czech writer Karel Čapek.

However, automata are common through history both in the real world and in stories.

Mechanical and psychological spectacle

Temple automatics as power mechanism

Moving on to medieval Europe, the automata and artifice in stories merge with the concept of Natura artifex, inspiring the 17th-century notions of mechanical nature and clockwork-world, which have in turn contributed to our contemporary models of rationality, underlying the conceptualisation of current technologies.