![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I find the conjunction of this, dating from the year I was born:
(In particular the lines: 'We've got a machine can learn the knack / Of doing your job, so don't come back ... Watch out for the man with the silicon chip')
With this: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/ john-lanchester/the-robots- are-coming (to be read in full)
Utterly fascinating. MacColl as a prophet of the socio-economic consequences of 'machine learning' (!!) - who'd have thunk it?
P. S. It's also just occurred to me that the LRB is the only present-day equivalent in this country of a 19th c. толстый журнал.
(In particular the lines: 'We've got a machine can learn the knack / Of doing your job, so don't come back ... Watch out for the man with the silicon chip')
With this: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n05/
Utterly fascinating. MacColl as a prophet of the socio-economic consequences of 'machine learning' (!!) - who'd have thunk it?
P. S. It's also just occurred to me that the LRB is the only present-day equivalent in this country of a 19th c. толстый журнал.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 09:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 10:04 am (UTC)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_among_the_Machines
Is this too early for your specialist period?
no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 11:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 10:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 05:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 07:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-28 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-09-29 06:20 am (UTC)Although of course Patrick Matthew had really published 'Darwin's' theory decades earlier, in 1831. In the appendix to a best-selling book. And getting right a key thing Darwin got wrong.
Allocation of intellectual credit is such a curious business.
no subject
Date: 2016-09-29 07:25 am (UTC)What was the key thing?
no subject
Date: 2016-09-29 12:28 pm (UTC)Darwin's prejudice was that evolution must always be gradual. PM realised that once a species was optimal for its environment it might change little, but when the environment changed it would change fast.
Darwin's error still gives false comfort to creationists today: 'Where are the missing links, the transitional forms'? We've found some now of course, but PM's reasoning that they'd be relatively rare was absolutely correct.