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

[Monte Davis]

Very much agreed

On Mon, Jan 25, 2016 at 6:45 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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