Oh what the hell, while we're on the subject of work

[kortirion_among_the_trees]

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.

Comments

[colinbj.livejournal.com]

I only just realised that 'Darwin Among The Machines' (1863) came only four years after 'The Origin Of Species' (1859)!

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.

[arda-unmarred.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of Patrick Matthew - just goes to show the truth of your last point! It's always Wallace you think of when considering the unfairness of Darwin's deification.

What was the key thing?