I had a weird dream last night. I was sitting in a church and completely bored with the service. I felt really ill at ease in the environment. I was with a load of vagrants and was trying to persuade them to leave with me but was making too much noise in the process.

Then this redhead turned around to face me, our eyes met and I was struck how beautiful she was. She climbed over the pews and sat on my legs, putting her arms around me.

I wanted to share this story but thought better of it because it's wanton information and blatent exhibitionism really isn't it. Then I found an excuse.

In the comments about robots it's said that the word comes from the Slavic to toil. In the "history of ideas" the concept of a robot exists a long way before the actual capability to produce one. Since when I cannot say but in Gogol's Diary of a madman there are words along the lines of, "he was functioning in a machine-like manner a mere tool of the English". It seems clear the Gogol means robotically. In Meditation II, Descartes wonders if it is not impossible that the other people he perceives do not really have consciousness akin to his own. Perhaps they are like puppets, sort of tools of a evil genius out to deceive him; it is hypothetically possible.

So, where did the concept of a robot come from, it is sheer randomness that I happened to read those comments when I did but now the association between robots and dreams has been struck in my mind.

Wasn't the woman in my dream a sort of robot? My sub-conscious prodding me with a metaphorical stick?

Isn't that what "people" in our dreams are, aren't they tools of our sub-consciousness, puppets used to explore its glitches and needs?

Now I am wondering if they do not have wider import in our nature as a species. Perhaps we formed the whole idea of tool use from a sort of secret semaphore of our dreams. Where did the idea of slavery come from? To make people unfree, as they are in our dreams. The people in our dreams are empty shells without ego and consciousness. They are instruments like robots and tools.

Moral philosophers are continually trying to find a limit where humanity begins and animal ends. Both consciousness and tool use have served as definitions of that limit but I wonder if they are not one and the same.

This is just an idea I wanted to explore a little. To read the comments you need to vote in the poll on the page I think.