The idea of robots is not new, and mention of them goes back to at least classical Greek times. In Homer’s Iliad,
for example, a Greek god named Hephaestus created armor for the hero Achilles. Later, around 1495, Leonardo Da
Vinci created specifications for a robot that could wave its arms, sit up, and
move its jaw and head. Still, use of robots has become widespread only recently.
Among the more interesting types of robots we use today is one called the swarm
robot. This type of robot was inspired by colonies of insects (like bees or
ants), and is distinct from other types, in that the robots act together.
Because of it, these robots are said to use what’s called “swarm intelligence,”
wherein the individuals behave together as one superorganism. In much the
same way birds will flock in a single group and ants will work collectively,
these robots are employed to work together to complete one major task. The U.S.
military, for example, was recently working with the idea of swarm intelligence to
control unmanned vehicles. More interesting, two researchers
have argued that nanobot swarms can possibly be used in the human body to
destroy cancer tumors. For the more mundane tasks of life, swarm robots can be useful for things like dispersing to
find something hidden, to spy, or to clean. The benefit to this type of robot
is that even if several of these robots fail or malfunction, the rest can still
complete the task.
At different points in history, governments have devoted men, women, and resources to try to persuade others to their side. One significant example of this occurred in Germany under Adolf Hitler. Hitler knew how important it was to make sure the German people were on his side as leader of the country. One way he did this was by controlling what people heard. Specifically, near the beginning of World War II, Hitler made it a crime for anyone in Germany to listen to foreign radio broadcasts. These were called the “extraordinary radio measures.” He did this to ensure that Germans weren’t being persuaded by enemy countries to question their loyalty to Hitler. He knew that a German listening to a radio broadcast from Britain might persuade that German to believe that Great Britain was the good guy and Hitler the bad guy. This was so important, in fact, that two people in Germany were actually executed because they had either listened to or planned to listen to a foreign radio broadcast (one...
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