Victorian Writer Who Feared Machine Evolution
Chapter 1

The mechanical dreamers

Chapter 2

The birth of symbolic thought

Chapter 3

The illusion of empathy

Chapter 4

The competitive spark

Ch 1 · The mechanical dreamers
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007skaty Victorian author Samuel Butler feared the rapid evolution of technology

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007skaty Ada Lovelace envisioned the creative potential of early computing machines

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007skaty The truth behind the chess-playing Mechanical Turk

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007skaty Erewhon Machine Evolution

They are evolving! They are evolving! Smash the steam engines down!

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The woman who saw art in numbers
BETA

007skaty Weave numbers into art to discover how early thinkers saw the creative potential of computers.

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The clockwork duck that pretended to digest

007skaty The famous Parisian clockwork duck boasted four hundred moving wing parts but used hidden dyed breadcrumbs to fake digestion.

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Quiz

What did Jacques de Vaucanson's mechanical duck actually excrete instead of digested food in 1738?

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Quiz

In which year did Jacques de Vaucanson present his famous 'Digesting Duck' automaton in Paris?

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We project our own consciousness onto the tools we create.

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The grand chess-playing machine that wasn't

007skaty The legendary automaton defeated Napoleon Bonaparte decades before real computers could play chess.

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Quiz

Which of these historical figures was defeated in chess by the Mechanical Turk hoax?

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Quiz

What was the secret behind the Mechanical Turk's ability to play chess?

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Fun Fact

Vaucanson's rubber tubes: While building his famous digesting duck in 1738, French engineer Jacques de Vaucanson invented the world's first flexible rubber tube to simulate the duck's intestines.

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Quiz

Whose proposed mechanical computer, the Analytical Engine, did Ada Lovelace write her groundbreaking notes for?

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Quiz

What did Ada Lovelace famously predict the Analytical Engine could compose if given the right rules?

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Glossary
algorithm (noun)
A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations. Ada Lovelace wrote the first such sequence in 1843 for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.

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Quiz

Whose scientific theories heavily influenced Samuel Butler's ideas about machine evolution in 1872?

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Quiz

In which 1872 novel did Samuel Butler warn that machines would evolve consciousness and rule humans?

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Gossip

Would you have figured out the Turk's secret?

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The clockwork boy who wrote letters

007skaty The Writer, a 6,000-part mechanical boy, used cam wheels to write messages and convinced mesmerized onlookers it had human intent.

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