Vaucanson's Duck (M&D) again, again

[John Bailey]

I think almost the only functional value of eighteenth and nineteenth
century automata was symbolic. They were almost all lies, in a sense,
but it was a deception that inspired people to imagine the world other
than it was - interesting point about how that stimulated Babbage and
Lovelace to ponder further clockwork possibilities.

Recently heard science/speculative fiction described in a similar
manner - usually reflects the concerns of the day but can offer ways
to conceive of changes big and small.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2016 at 3:51 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> https://www.inverse.com/article/10494-how-automatons-helped-predict-the-future-of-robotics
>
> Short and superficial, but closes with the valuable ironic point that
> Charles Babbage was inspired by an 1819 exhibition of the chess-playing
> Mechanical Turk. The MT was bogus (a human player hidden inside), but the
> idea of its "programming" would help stimulate Babbage, Lovelace et al to
> create actual programming.
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l